Another Time, Another Life: The Story of a Crime

by Leif Gw Persson

  “Though I suspected you’d show up,” said Jolanta, smiling. “Would you like more coffee?”

  “Yes, please,” said Jarnebring, holding out his cup. “How did he get out of the general call-up?” Jarnebring asked. “I thought there wasn’t a single uniformed policeman who wasn’t in service last Thursday.”

  “He didn’t have to work,” said Jolanta. “He had some kind of overtime cap. But his wife had to work.”

  She smiled weakly, shaking her head.

  “What’s his name?” asked Jarnebring.

  “I would rather not say, as you understand,” said Jolanta.

  “I understand,” said Jarnebring. “But unfortunately I need to know who he is. And if it’s as you say, I’ll do what I can so that this stays between you and me and him.”

  “Okay,” said Jolanta. “I understand. Let me think.”

  “Another thing while you’re thinking,” said Jarnebring. “Do you have any idea who might have murdered Eriksson?”

  Not a clue apart from the fact that she hadn’t done it. She had never met anyone that Eriksson knew, apart from the man at the TV company she already cleaned for. She didn’t even know if Eriksson knew anyone else, but she had a definite idea that he didn’t know very many people. So she had no idea who might have done it. Not even who might conceivably have done it if it necessarily had to be someone who knew Eriksson. How could they be so sure, incidentally, that he hadn’t been robbed and murdered by someone completely unknown? Such things happened all the time in her old homeland.

  Did she have any idea why someone would have murdered him? Now she took her time before she answered.

  “Yes,” she said, nodding contemplatively. “I can imagine that someone wanted to get free of him. Someone he had power over. Someone he was pressuring. He was like that. He liked having power over people, and he liked letting them know it.”

  No, not that too, thought Jarnebring. This should be simple and obvious.

  “Okay,” said Jarnebring. “We have one small detail left, and then I might ask you for a small favor too, and after that I promise not to bother you anymore. Though if you think of something I suggest you call me.”

  “A small favor,” said Jolanta, raising her well-plucked eyebrows.

  “If you have time tomorrow to come over and look at his apartment. If there’s anything that’s missing, if someone has changed anything. I’m sure you understand why. Then the technicians want to take your fingerprints too in order to eliminate them from the investigation.”

  “Sure,” said Jolanta, nodding. “That’s fine.”

  “Then only the one small detail remains,” said Jarnebring, looking seriously at her.

  “Only the one? Okay then,” she said, nodding.

  She gave Jarnebring the name of her lover, and an hour later the married police officer confirmed her alibi.

  “What the hell do I do now?” he said, looking unhappily at Jarnebring.

  “If I were you I’d keep my mouth shut,” said Jarnebring, who knew what he was talking about from personal experience. “Personally, I’m going to try to find a place for this information way in the back of all our binders.”

  “Thanks,” said his colleague, looking somewhat less unhappy.

  “Although actually you deserve a kick in the ass,” said Jarnebring. “You never intended to call any one of us in the investigation.”

  “No,” said the colleague, looking unhappy again. “I guess I screwed up.”

  “Then we have to hope it doesn’t happen again,” said Jarnebring, grinning. Because one or the other of us would probably start to wonder, he thought.

  • • •

  Always mistrust chance—that was the third of his best friend’s golden rules for a murder investigation. I have to call Lars Martin and tell him about the wedding, thought Jarnebring, humming happily as he strode in through the door of his prospective wife’s apartment. But for various reasons, roughly the same ones that had occupied him the entire weekend, there was no time left over to do that tonight. It would have to be tomorrow, he thought, as he fell asleep with his prospective wife’s head resting against his right arm and his left arm carefully over her hip while he held his hand lightly pressed against her stomach.

  9

  Tuesday, December 5, 1989

  Jolanta was already waiting in the entryway when Jarnebring and Holt arrived at Eriksson’s building early Tuesday morning, and when they went through Eriksson’s apartment together she was thorough and took her time. There were three, possibly four things she was struck by, and the first was completely trivial. The coffee table in the living room was not where it usually was. Normally it would be farther from the couch than it was now.

  “We’re the ones who probably moved it,” said Jarnebring.

  “I should have realized that,” Jolanta replied, noticing the abundant traces of dried blood still on the floor.

  Her second observation was more interesting. The drawers in the desk in the office were unlocked. Usually they were locked.

  “You’re sure about that,” said Jarnebring.

  Jolanta smiled faintly and glanced at Holt, but when she saw that she was occupied by something else her smile became broader and she nodded resolutely.

  “I’m sure. They’re always locked. Curious, you know,” she said, winking at Jarnebring.

  When Jarnebring and Jolanta went through Eriksson’s clothes closet, things got really interesting.

  “A suitcase is missing,” said Jolanta, nodding toward two other suitcases that were on the topmost shelf in the clothes closet.

  “You’re sure of that,” said Jarnebring.

  “They were there the last time I cleaned,” said Jolanta.

  “Large, small?” Jarnebring asked.

  “In between,” Jolanta replied, measuring a rectangle of about two feet by twenty inches between her hands. “Neither large nor small, light brown leather, nice looking. Definitely expensive. I’d like one myself—but I’m not the one who took it if you’re wondering.”

  “No, why would you have done that,” said Jarnebring.

  “Nice looking,” said Jolanta, shrugging her shoulders as she smiled a little. “I suppose you know what Swedish guys say about Polish women?”

  “Anything else?” Jarnebring asked, pretending not to hear her question. “About the suitcase, I mean.”

  “He had his initials on it,” said Jolanta. “Face-to-face monogram, KGE … only one letter that didn’t fit,” she added, shrugging her shoulders.

  The final discovery Jolanta made was in the linen cabinet in Eriksson’s bathroom, but she wasn’t nearly as certain as she was about the suitcase.

  “I think some hand towels are missing,” said Jolanta. “I’m almost certain.”

  “You think so,” said Jarnebring. It can’t be a great quantity in any event, he thought as he looked at the well-filled shelves.

  “May I look?” asked Jolanta, nodding toward the laundry basket on the bathroom floor.

  “Sure,” said Jarnebring.

  Jolanta took her time and even counted through the towels that were in the cabinet and in the laundry basket. When she was done she nodded and looked more sure.

  “A few are missing,” she said. “Not a lot but at least five or six. Of the medium-size variety,” she said, pointing to the towel rack next to the washbasin.

  “Half a dozen hand towels,” said Jarnebring. “Eriksson couldn’t have taken them to the laundry himself?” Fucking Wiijnbladh, he thought.

  “No,” said Jolanta. “He never did. He was too good for that. Maybe your colleagues took them with them,” she suggested.

  “We’ll have to check,” said Jarnebring. “It’ll work out.”

  As soon as she left, Jarnebring and Holt checked Wiijnbladh’s report from the crime scene investigation. There was a notation that all the drawers in the desk were unlocked, that some of them contained “various papers,” and that the top middle drawer was empty.

  “Maybe
Eriksson locked them just before he went out,” said Holt. “I would too if that woman was cleaning my house.”

  A total of seven different drawers, thought Jarnebring. She would be coming to clean the next morning anyway. That’s quite a lot of locking and unlocking, he thought. He might lock one or two maybe, because he needed something, but all seven?

  “This may solve itself when we see what they contain,” said Jarnebring.

  “There’s nothing about any laundry, nothing about any hand towels … apart from the one that Wiijnbladh mentioned at the meeting,” said Holt, shutting the binder with the technician’s report.

  “We’ll have to talk with the little man,” Jarnebring decided.

  After that Jarnebring decided that the bookcases in the living room could wait. The built-in bookshelves covered the entire long wall from floor to ceiling. In total there was more than 150 feet of shelf space and up to several thousand books.

  “Think about it,” said Jarnebring. “It’s going to take the whole day.”

  “I realize we don’t have to read them too,” said Holt, who seemed rather cheerful.

  They finished off the kitchen instead. Expensive china, beautiful glassware, every imaginable cooking utensil. So far it was like the rest of the apartment. The fridge, freezer, and cupboards were impeccable. Even the vegetables still seemed fresh, despite the fact that it would soon be a week since Eriksson had died.

  But in general they did not find anything of interest. Wiijnbladh had already rooted through the garbage bag under the sink on Thursday evening, and according to his report even that appeared to have made a neat and tidy impression. The most exciting thing they found was a glass jar of preserves with an old-fashioned lid and a rubber ring, in which Eriksson apparently stored currency in smaller denominations, coins, and various receipts for alcohol and groceries.

  But it took time, and as they stood discussing whether they should have lunch before they tackled the bookshelves, Bäckström called the victim’s phone to ask if they had found any safe-deposit box keys.

  “That fucking blind bat Wiijnbladh didn’t find any,” Bäckström explained. “But now I happen to know that there should be a couple.”

  Jarnebring had taken a wild chance and looked in the top middle drawer in the desk in the office. The key was way at the back, wedged between the frame and the bottom of the drawer, which was otherwise empty.

  Strange, Jarnebring thought. If I stored my things in a desk like that, I would have all the ordinary stuff in that drawer, so why was that one empty?

  “I found it,” said Jarnebring when he returned to the phone.

  “That’s great,” said Bäckström. “Bring it over right away. Then you can tag along on a search at Handelsbanken.”

  Holt chose to stay at the apartment. She nodded at the bookshelves in the living room.

  “You go ahead, I’ll start going through the books,” said Holt, and without Jarnebring really understanding why, he almost felt a little disappointed as he got into their service car alone and drove up to Kungsholmen.

  Bäckström was in a splendid mood. He had received a tip on the phone that morning.

  “I hate it when I don’t know what they’ve been up to,” Bäckström explained. “Maybe you recall that we have three empty hours when Eriksson is unaccounted for between twelve o’clock and three last Thursday. After he’d left his conference and before he showed up at work.”

  “Yes, I have a faint recollection of that,” said Jarnebring. “It was Holt and I who found that out, as maybe you recall.”

  “Sure,” said Bäckström, who hadn’t noticed to begin with. “But now that’s cleared up in any case. He evidently has a safe-deposit box at the Handelsbanken office on Karlavägen, halfway between his office and where he lives, and he showed up there at one-thirty last Thursday, sat down in the vault, and went through his box before he left the bank at quarter to three. An hour and fifteen minutes he sat there. It was a gal at the bank who called and gave us the tip. She’d seen in the papers that he was murdered. An hour and a quarter,” Bäckström repeated. “This is getting fucking interesting.”

  One hour later Bäckström and Jarnebring were down in the Handelsbanken vault, monitored by a very proper bank manager, looking on while a female employee with the bank’s and Eriksson’s keys lifted out a safe-deposit box of the largest available size.

  “If you’ll excuse us,” said Bäckström overbearingly, pulling on a pair of plastic gloves, “I would like to look myself first.”

  Fucking idiot, thought Jarnebring.

  The box was empty. There was nothing in it at all. Not even a dust bunny.

  “Damn it,” Bäckström hummed as they sat in the car en route back to the police station on Kungsholmen. “He must have emptied the box.”

  Congratulations, thought Jarnebring. Now I’m starting to recognize you.

  “Doesn’t sound completely unlikely,” said Jarnebring. “Considering the fact that it was empty, I mean,” he continued innocently.

  “It doesn’t take an hour and a half to empty a safe-deposit box, does it?” said Bäckström. “And five hours later some bastard kills him,” Bäckström continued, sounding as though he was thinking out loud.

  Always mistrust chance, thought Jarnebring, but because this kind of thinking was certainly too advanced for the little tub of lard, he had chosen to express this in a different way.

  “Considering that it had been more than a month since he was there the last time, this is undoubtedly a strange coincidence,” said Jarnebring.

  “How the hell do you know that?” Bäckström asked suspiciously.

  “I asked the manager,” said Jarnebring. While you were trying to hit on that little teller, he thought.

  Then he dropped Bäckström off outside the homicide squad’s offices on Kungsholmsgatan, took the car down to the garage, hurried past his office at the squad to see if anything had happened—which it hadn’t—and because his stomach had started growling ferociously he chose the simple way out and went down to the police department’s restaurant and had a late lunch.

  There he ran into a couple of his old colleagues who were now working at the national homicide squad. One thing led to another, they ended up in the break room at the squad, and when he finally returned to Eriksson’s apartment on Rådmansgatan it was already late afternoon.

  “How’s it going with the books?” Jarnebring asked as he stepped into the living room in Eriksson’s apartment.

  “Good that you came,” said Holt. “I just finished.”

  I’ll be damned, thought Jarnebring, but of course he didn’t say that.

  “That was quick work,” he said. “Find anything interesting?”

  “I don’t know,” said Holt, “but it’s strange anyway. How did things go for you, by the way?”

  “Eh,” said Jarnebring with feeling. “We’ll discuss that later. Tell me now.”

  “I’ll take it from the start,” said Holt. “ ’Cause otherwise I’m afraid it’ll seem a little strange.”

  Do that, thought Jarnebring. So that you’re quite certain that old uncle Bo understands what you’re saying.

  “I’m listening,” he said.

  Holt had leafed through all the books on the shelves to see if they contained notes or interesting inserted papers. None of them had. In purely general terms it was an ordinary, standard Swedish collection that could be found in any sufficiently prosperous, educated, middle-class home: all the great Swedish authors in bound collected editions, a number of classics such as Dostoyevsky, Balzac, Proust, Musil, Mann, Hemingway, and so on; a majority of the most celebrated modern Swedish and foreign literary authors; quite a bit of history with the emphasis on biographies of famous people, and obviously a few major reference works. In this respect everything was completely in harmony with Eriksson’s taste in decor and clothing, eating and drinking habits. Of course the books were arranged in alphabetical order by the author’s last name.

  “What is so stran
ge then?” asked Jarnebring.

  “Those,” said Holt, pointing to a pile of about twenty books that she had set on the table in front of the couch.

  Bäckström was not one to let himself be discouraged by the fact that he had drawn a blank in the bank vault, and as soon as he sat behind his desk he assured himself that the investigations he had initiated the day before were being pursued with undiminished force.

  Because those fairies at the parliamentary ombudsman’s office had done away with that excellent fag file, for lack of anything better he told Gunsan to see if Eriksson could be found in the general plaintiff registry. Colleague Blockhead had been given the task of talking to the folks who worked at burglary, the detective squad, and the liquor commission about whether Eriksson showed up in any interesting, sexually deviant context. The three younger idiots from the uniformed police had finally been sent out to show pictures of Eriksson at the usual dives and clubs where the bum boys, butt princes, and all the other disease spreaders flocked together as soon as the lights were turned off. The results had been meager.

  If Eriksson had been the victim of any crime during recent years he had not reported it. According to Gunsan, he was nowhere to be found in the police department’s register of plaintiffs. What the hell use are old ladies? thought Bäckström.

  Colleague Blockhead had nothing to say whatsoever, so on that point it was exactly what Bäckström had expected from the get-go. Someone like that you should just kill, thought Bäckström.

  One of the three little shits from the uniformed police did eventually come up with something. At a club on Sveavägen one of the customers seemed to recognize Eriksson by the photo he had been shown. He also gave a tip about a place Eriksson might be expected to have frequented.

  “He thought he reminded him of a leather queen he met last summer,” the younger colleague explained. “They say they hang out at an S&M club up on Wollmar Yxkullsgatan on Söder. It’s for those types that like a little harder stuff,” he explained.