Another Time, Another Life: The Story of a Crime

by Leif Gw Persson

The reason that Wiijnbladh had been absent from the meeting the day before was that he was saddled with a poisoning. A medical student who lived at home with his elderly father had been having problems with his studies. He had missed a number of exams, fallen seriously behind, and after a period of brooding decided to solve his academic problems by lacing his dad’s breakfast yogurt with an ample dose of thallium. His success far exceeded the progress of his studies. Considered as a motive, this was an excellent illustration of Lars Martin Johansson’s thesis of the cherry on the cake.

  Now the former future doctor was sitting in the jail at Kronoberg. On Wiijnbladh’s workbench at the tech squad was the bottle of thallium that the perpetrator had swiped from the chemistry department at the Karolinska Institute, and there was enough poison remaining to depopulate half the police headquarters on Kungsholmen. In Wiijnbladh’s pleasure-filled fantasies, this enchanted bottle with its death-bringing genie was a gift from above that probably, within the not too distant future, would solve his problems as well.

  Wiijnbladh’s difficulties were not related to his studies, for he had never really devoted himself to any such things. Apart from six years of elementary school, less than a year at the old police academy, and a few weeklong courses for crime technicians, Wiijnbladh had studiously avoided all theoretical extravagances, and just like the majority of his colleagues on the squad he was firmly convinced that the only abilities worth the name were those he had acquired by practice.

  “We have to distinguish between theory and practice the same way we distinguish between imagination and reality,” as his legendary boss Commissioner Blenke had so eloquently summarized the matter when, in connection with a review of the squad’s operations, he explained to the inspectors from the National Police Board why the entire library appropriation was spent on fingerprint powder.

  Wiijnbladh’s problem was different, and relatively simple in the sense that it made up approximately 99 percent of all his problems.

  It was bad enough that Wiijnbladh’s wife cheated on him quite openly, which was contrary to the basic idea. Worst of all, however, was that she preferred to do it with other police officers, and because this had been going on for a number of years there was not a division nowadays within the Stockholm Police Department that didn’t contain one or more coworkers who had put horns on their colleague Wiijnbladh.

  Like his spiritual brother, the former medical student, after lengthy speculations Wiijnbladh had come to the conclusion that the only way to solve the problem was to eliminate his wife. Because Wiijnbladh deeply disliked both blunt trauma and knife attacks, was nauseated by their consequences, and obviously did not want to go to jail, he had decided to poison her. Murder by poison was a completely unknown practice at the tech squad where he worked, and the fact that the case of the medical student was solved was not due to dogged fieldwork by the squad’s collaborators but rather to the perpetrator himself, who in complete confidence had told an even larger number of classmates about his little caper with his dad.

  What could be more certain than using poison, thought Wiijnbladh, for it was common knowledge that lightning never strikes twice in the same place.

  Wiijnbladh was now a rich man. He had had both motive and opportunity for a long time, but only one day ago he had secured the means required. So he was also a happy man and decided it would be best to wait for a long weekend or perhaps even until summer when all police officers worth the name were on vacation and only Bäckström and his constantly moonlighting fellow prisoners were left behind.

  • • •

  Chief Inspector Danielsson at the homicide squad did not sound equally happy when he called Jarnebring and asked if he wanted to have lunch with him out in town. Jarnebring had immediately figured out why he sounded like he did. But sure, lunch was still lunch. They had mashed potatoes and rutabaga with pickled pork and each had a light beer. Apart from the latter this was food for real policemen, and even before Danielsson stuck the fork into the large piece of meat on his plate he got to the point.

  “You don’t need to say anything, Bo,” Danielsson grunted. “I talked with Gunsan this morning and she told me what happened at the meeting. I haven’t managed to get hold of that fat little shit because he’s hiding out as usual. Which is just as well, because otherwise I might have done something to him I would regret.”

  “Have you read the material?” asked Jarnebring.

  “Some of it,” Danielsson nodded. “Then Gunsan filled in the rest. If I understood it right both Welander and Tischler have alibis. It’s completely ruled out that either of them were holding the knife?”

  “Yes,” said Jarnebring, shaking his head. “There isn’t a chance. Welander’s witnesses are too good for that, regardless of what you might think about their TV programs, and as far as Tischler is concerned Holt has checked with the airline and the personnel out at Arlanda.”

  “Could they have used an accomplice?” asked Danielsson.

  “Don’t think so,” said Jarnebring. “That seems both unlikely and far-fetched.”

  “Why are you so in love with those two?” Danielsson wondered.

  “Because I think they’re both lying,” said Jarnebring. “Even if they themselves are innocent of Eriksson’s murder, and perhaps didn’t even know that it would happen, I still get the idea that they know what went on.”

  “Why do you think they’re lying then?” asked Danielsson. Perjury, conspiracy, protecting a criminal, he thought unhappily.

  “Why in the name of common sense would two people like them keep associating year after year with a miserable character like Eriksson if it wasn’t because he had some kind of hold over them?” Jarnebring countered. “Take Tischler, for example. As far as I’m concerned he can have all the money in the world. I still don’t believe he helped Eriksson earn a few million just because he wanted to be nice to him. Without even having met Tischler, I really don’t think he’s the type.”

  “Eriksson blackmailed them?” Danielsson looked questioningly at Jarnebring.

  “I think that at the very least he had some kind of hold over them,” said Jarnebring.

  “How do we open this up?” said Danielsson.

  “Bring them in, lock them up, and pound the shit out of them,” said Jarnebring, smiling like a wolf. While the prosecutor climbs the walls, he thought.

  “That won’t work,” said Danielsson, “and you know that as well as I do. So what do we do instead?”

  “Don’t know,” said Jarnebring. Because if I had any idea we wouldn’t be sitting here, he thought.

  “Let’s think about it,” said Danielsson. “We’ll talk after the weekend.”

  19

  Monday, December 18–Friday, December 22, 1989

  For a Swedish police officer—which was the standard by which he should be measured—Detective Inspector Bo Jarnebring had been involved in a great many murder investigations. On a few occasions he had also happened to be present when a breakthrough occurred. That blessed moment when all the question marks straightened themselves out, when you went from total darkness to radiant insight, when the entire investigation force could bask in glory. All within the course of a few hours.

  Even more often, and especially in recent years, he had been involved with just the opposite. The laborious, hopeless, drawn-out process by which you didn’t move forward no matter how long you kept trudging; in which suggestions and tips, initiatives, drive, and ordinary, simple, routine work dried up and ran out, and everyone’s combined efforts, all the good suggestions and sure tips as well as ordinary delusions, wild chances, pure shots in the dark, and completely excusable mistakes were transformed at last into mere paper, all of which ended up in the name of justice in the same binders on the shelf for unsolved crimes.

  So too this week in December 1989 Jarnebring once again experienced how a murder investigation quietly went dormant and died, and his new colleague, Inspector Anna Holt, was involved in the same thing for the first time.

 
• • •

  As early as Tuesday morning their boss at the detective squad called Danielsson and said he had to have his detectives back. That he completely understood his colleague Danielsson’s problems, but he cared even more about the ones that were being heaped on his own desk in a growing mass. Danielsson didn’t even try to protest. He just took a quick glance at his bookshelf and ascertained that there would surely be room to squeeze in one more binder.

  On Wednesday evening the twentieth of December yet another murder occurred in a porn shop on Söder. The next day the tabloids had already made it the fifth in a series in which Eriksson appeared as victim number four. During the past year an unknown perpetrator had knifed three men, all of whom had in common that they worked in various stores that sold sex merchandise, showed porno films, and sometimes went the whole way and broke the law against procurement. This was bad enough in itself, especially as most of the details argued for it being the same perpetrator on all three occasions, but every thinking police officer also realized that the murder of Kjell Eriksson did not belong in that grouping because—simply put—there “was zero in common with the porn murders.”

  With one exception no one on the homicide squad even considered linking the lapsing Kjell Eriksson investigation with the porn murder investigation. The exception was Bäckström, who went head-to-head with Danielsson in his office on Thursday morning. Bäckström had discovered that the porn murderer’s third victim (a) was working in a shop that catered to homosexual customers, and (b) was homosexual himself, and for the detective inspector the whole thing was suddenly as plain as the nose on his face.

  During the first five minutes Danielsson just sat quietly and glared at Bäckström while the vein on his temple wriggled like a worm just set on a hook. Then he suddenly got up and despite his bad knees leaped over the desk to grab his coworker by the throat, finally put an end to the madness, and get a little needed calm in his own existence. Bäckström managed to dodge him, wriggled out through Danielsson’s door, was transformed into a gazelle, and fled down the corridor of the squad offices while Danielsson was hanging on to the door handle and howling at him as he disappeared into the stairwell of the police station.

  “I’m going to kill you, you fat little bastard!” Danielsson roared, and despite the fact that this actually had nothing to do with it, in reality it also put an end to the investigation of the murder of Kjell Eriksson.

  Danielsson put yet another binder on his shelf, but considering “all the old shit that was already there” it was basically more of the same. Besides, it would soon be time to take off for the holidays. Personally he would be going away over Christmas and New Year’s, and when he came back he could start counting the days until retirement.

  20

  Wednesday, December 27, 1989

  On Wednesday the twenty-seventh of December, Wiijnbladh received a courier package from the National Laboratory of Forensic Science in Linköping. In it was the hand towel that his colleague Bäckström had found at the bottom of the laundry basket in Eriksson’s apartment on Rådmansgatan.

  With the package also came a written report that confirmed what Wiijnbladh had already figured out by using his nose, namely that someone had vomited in the hand towel. Knowing that a relatively short time before vomiting this individual evidently had consumed a meal consisting of fish, potatoes, vegetables, and a cup of coffee would scarcely advance the investigation, thought Wiijnbladh. Nor would the findings that the hand towel also bore traces of a lot of chemical rubbish that no normal person would have the faintest idea about, but that he, through practical experience, knew was always found on hand towels and similar places where people dried themselves off.

  Stuck-up academics. What use are such people in the police department? thought Wiijnbladh sourly, setting both the package and the report aside. He himself had more important things to do. For some time he had been gathering considerable information about the element thallium. Unfortunately this research was still only theoretical and thereby unusable in a purely practical sense, but soon … soon, thought Wiijnbladh, it would be time to take the next step.

  • • •

  Criminal Inspector Bo Jarnebring went to work on Wednesday morning and would be filling in as the on-duty chief inspector until the day before New Year’s Eve, after which he had requested vacation to make the life-changing move and enter into marriage with his beloved fiancée. He had forgiven his best friend for secretly getting there ahead of him, and police superintendent Lars Martin Johansson and his spouse would be witnesses and honored guests at the wedding.

  Jarnebring had not given further thought to the now dormant investigation of the murder of Kjell Göran Eriksson. Naturally he’d heard the story about Bäckström, who had unfortunately saved his skin owing to Danielsson’s bad knees; it was already a classic in the Kronoberg block. Jarnebring had even called Danielsson to offer his own legs in the event Danielsson considered it necessary to try again. Even though it had been more than twenty years since he last represented Sweden on the national team in the four-hundred-meter relay, he did not think catching Bäckström would pose any serious problems.

  “On one condition,” Danielsson had chuckled. “That you just catch the bastard for me. I want to tear him apart myself.”

  Because there was a lot to do despite the Christmas week lull, Jarnebring had lunch at the restaurant in the courtyard of police headquarters. It was basically empty, so he chose a table in a far corner where he could leaf through the newspaper in peace and quiet with his coffee. As he was sitting there an older colleague who worked with the patrol cars came up and asked if he might sit down and exchange a few words.

  Wasn’t his name Stridh? thought Jarnebring, searching in his memory files. He never forgot a face but it was starting to take longer to come up with the names.

  “Stridh,” said Stridh and sat down. “We met when you were the head of the bureau at Östermalm, if you remember that.”

  “Have a seat,” said Jarnebring, nodding at a vacant chair.

  Stridh had an errand. Jarnebring had figured that out even before his colleague sat down, but it had taken a good deal of hemming and hawing and beating around the bush before he spit it out.

  “Do you remember our colleague Persson who worked in break-ins, who went to SePo later?” Stridh asked.

  Do I remember? thought Jarnebring, nodding. A real policeman and one of the surliest colleagues he’d ever met.

  “I remember him,” said Jarnebring. “Why do you ask?”

  “I had a visit from him last week,” said Stridh, leaning forward as he said this. “Strange,” he added, shaking his head.

  “I’m listening,” said Jarnebring, setting aside his newspaper.

  Stridh twisted uncomfortably and looked around.

  “Actually I can’t say anything,” said Stridh, “but I thought I should talk to you anyway.”

  Do it then, thought Jarnebring, even if he wouldn’t have done it if he had been in Stridh’s place and Persson had told him to keep his mouth shut. Persson was not the type you did that sort of thing to, thought Jarnebring.

  “Am I suspected of spying?” Jarnebring asked, grinning.

  “No, not at all,” said Stridh deprecatingly. “It wasn’t about you at all.”

  “What did he want then?” said Jarnebring. I don’t have all day, he thought.

  “He wanted to talk about the West German embassy,” said Stridh. “Yes, you were there too, I guess,” he added. “Didn’t you almost get shot by the way?”

  “People talk a lot of shit,” said Jarnebring.

  “Yes, that was a dreadful story,” said Stridh, almost looking as though he was thinking out loud.

  “What does this have to do with me?” asked Jarnebring. There must still be a hundred officers here in the building who were there at the West German embassy, he thought.

  “Nothing so far as I understand,” said Stridh, shaking his head. “It was about another matter. That homosexual murder
on the thirtieth of November,” said Stridh. “Isn’t that your investigation?”

  “Bäckström’s,” said Jarnebring curtly. It’s just senseless how much shit gets talked about here in the building, he thought. “It’s Bäckström’s investigation. If you want to talk about it, then he’s the one you should take it up with. I’ve been taken off the case.”

  “Bäckström,” said Stridh hesitantly. “Isn’t that a real misfortune?”

  “Do Turks have brown eyes?” said Jarnebring, smiling.

  “I know what you mean,” said Stridh, and he smiled too. “Although I actually read somewhere that lots of Turks have blue or gray eyes.

  Whatever that’s supposed to mean.”

  No, thought Jarnebring.

  “What can I help you with?” said Jarnebring briefly, sneaking a glance at the clock to be on the safe side.

  “Here I sit taking up your time,” said Stridh, shaking his head. “Most of what you hear is just gossip,” he continued. “But this is still not cleared up … that murder from the thirtieth of November I mean,” Stridh clarified.

  “No,” said Jarnebring. If it had been, I’d have heard about it, he thought.

  “Was he homosexual then,” asked Stridh, “the victim, that is?”

  “People talk too much,” said Jarnebring, shrugging his shoulders, “but if you ask our colleague Bäckström, he has no doubt had that thought.”

  “Him, yes,” said Stridh. “But what about you?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?” asked Jarnebring.

  Stridh sighed again and looked almost unhappy.

  “You don’t think it was something political then?” Stridh asked carefully.

  Political, thought Jarnebring. “What do you mean?” he asked. What is this guy after? he thought.

  “Whatever. Let’s forget it,” Stridh said, shaking his head deprecatingly.

  I see, thought Jarnebring, looking at the clock. We’ll forget it. What’s five minutes when you have an entire life, he thought.