“What do you want me to do with this?” her acquaintance asked two hours later.
“Compare it with the Palme bullet,” said Holt.
“Goodness,” he said, looking at her. Clearly surprised. “You’re aware that this is a completely different type of bullet,” he asked.
“Yes,” said Holt. “What’s the problem?”
“Several,” he said. “How much do you know about firearms? About modern revolvers, for example?”
“Educated layman,” said Holt. “Give me the essentials.” No long expositions, thanks, she thought.
“Okay,” he said.
Then he gave her the essentials. Without digressions. The bullet with which the prime minister had been shot was a .357 caliber Magnum. This meant that it had a diameter of 357 thousandths of an inch. The word “Magnum” meant that the bullet had an extra strong powder charge.
“That I already knew,” said Holt.
The bore in the barrel on a modern revolver has elevations and depressions—lands and grooves—that run in a spiral through the barrel. Either to the right or to the left. Figuratively speaking you might say that the bullet is screwed along through the bore and that the lands and grooves then leave tracks in it. The purpose of getting the bullet to rotate is to give it a straighter trajectory.
“I knew that too,” said Holt.
Different makes of revolvers have different such characteristics as a rule. A different number of lands and grooves with varying land width, groove direction, and groove gradient, where the latter determines how many revolutions around its own axis the bullet rotates over a given distance.
“I have spotty knowledge about this,” said Holt.
“You see,” he said. “Now we’re starting to get close.”
The bullet with which the prime minister had been shot had right-rotating lands with a width of about 2.8 millimeters and a groove gradient of about five degrees.
“I didn’t know that,” said Holt. “So what’s the problem?”
The problem with the bullet she had brought with her was that it was of a different type than the bullet Palme had been shot with. Bullets were made of lead as a rule. Both Holt’s bullet and the Palme bullet were lead bullets, and so far no problem.
“Lead is soft, as you know,” he explained. “In order to protect the bullets from deformation and increase their penetration force when they hit the target, they are usually supplied with a protective coating of harder material. What’s called a mantle.”
“Of copper,” said Holt.
“As a rule of copper or various copper alloys. Your bullet, for example, has a pure copper mantle. Harder than lead, to be sure, but far from as hard as the mantle on the bullets from Sveavägen. You see, it’s made of an alloy of copper and zinc. It’s very hard. Called tombak, by the way.”
“The problems,” Holt reminded him.
“The traces from the same barrel can vary, depending on the bullet. Your bullet has a softer coating. The traces from the barrel may be clearer than on the bullet with a harder coating. Traces that are not deposited on a harder bullet are perhaps deposited on your bullet, because it’s softer.”
“How do we solve this?” asked Holt.
“Give me the revolver, then I’ll do a new test firing with a bullet similar to the one used on Sveavägen.”
“There we have another problem,” said Holt.
Without going into details, she told him that the only thing she had was the bullet she had just given him. Plus a report from the test firing done in the spring of 1983.
“Here’s the report,” said Holt, handing it over.
“The weapon type agrees. So far there’s no problem.”
“So what do we do now?” asked Holt.
“We work with what we have,” said her acquaintance, nodding encouragingly. “I’ll just retrieve the bullets from Sveavägen so we have something to compare to.”
Retrieve the bullets from Sveavägen. Now this is finally starting to resemble something, thought Anna Holt.
In other respects what happened next was not particularly like what you might see in crime shows on TV about life on an American tech squad. He sat there at his comparison microscope, looked, adjusted knobs, hummed, and made notes. It took more than half an hour. Almost a whole episode of CSI.
“Okay,” he said, straightening up and nodding at her.
“Shoot,” said Holt. She pointed at him with her right index finger, curled it and fired, formed her lips to an O and blew away the gunpowder smoke.
“All the traces that are on the Palme bullet are on your bullet,” he said. “This argues for the fact that they come from the same weapon. But,” he continued, “in addition there are traces on your bullet that aren’t on the Palme bullet.”
Typical, thought Holt.
“So how do we explain those?” she asked.
“Because your bullet was fired three years before the bullets from Sveavägen, we can rule out that the traces originate from additional use of the weapon. The explanation is probably that the mantle on your bullet is softer.”
“The probability that they come from the same weapon,” asked Holt.
“What I said on the phone about ninety percent you can forget as long as we can’t compare the same type of bullet. Seventy-five, maybe even eighty percent probability.”
“What do you think personally?” she asked.
“I think they come from the same weapon,” he said, looking at her seriously. “But I wouldn’t swear to that in court. There I would say that with a probability of seventy-five percent they come from the same weapon, and that sort of thing isn’t enough for a guilty verdict. Which despite everything we probably should be happy about.”
“Even though all the traces that are on the Palme bullet are on my bullet,” said Holt. Coward, she thought.
“The problem with those traces is that they are mostly so-called general characteristics,” he said. “The kind that go with the type of weapon. As far as the characteristics of a particular weapon are concerned, through use, damage, and so forth on just that weapon, then it’s not as clear. There are some like that, but none that are simple and unambiguous. On a completely different matter, by the way,” he continued. “What do you think about staying and having dinner?”
“It’ll have to be another time, unfortunately,” said Holt. “What do you think about—”
“I know,” he interrupted. He smiled and put his right index finger to his mouth. “Just don’t forget about dinner.”
As soon as she was in the car she called Jan Lewin on her cell.
“I’ll be at work in two hours,” said Holt. “You and me and Lisa have to meet.”
“So it’s that bad,” said Lewin and sighed.
“With seventy-five percent probability,” Holt replied.
Then she called her boss, Lars Martin Johansson, but although it was said that he could see around corners, he only sounded like the Genius from Näsåker.
“I hear what you’re saying, Holt,” Johansson muttered. “But you don’t believe in all seriousness that little dandy Waltin shot Olof Palme?”
“Have you been listening to what I said?”
“How could I have avoided it?” said Johansson. “You’ve been talking nonstop for half an hour. My office,” he continued, “as soon as you get back. Bring the other two with you too.”
“I’ll need a good hour,” said Holt. “It’s a hundred miles.”
“One more thing,” said Johansson, who didn’t seem to be listening.
“Yes?”
“Drive carefully,” said Johansson.
“That was nice of you, Lars,” said Holt.
“Considering that you must have the bullet in your pocket,” said Johansson. Then he hung up.
49
GeGurra is a real player, thought Bäckström, who was on his way to a late Thursday lunch at the Opera bar to which his benefactor had invited him. GeGurra always treated and he always treated generously. He was definitely a real player
who sprinkled his manna over all the first-rate people in his vicinity. Like Bäckström, for example.
Something of an operator besides, thought Bäckström. With his silver-white hair, his shiny Italian suits. Never made a show of himself. He was simply there like an old-school mafioso. Not someone with a mouth that ran ahead of his brain, creating problems for himself and for others. A player and an operator, he thought.
A little like himself, actually. Most recently last week he had given a whole fifty-kronor bill to an unusually hopeless hag so that she could take a taxi to the subway for further transport to her wretched Tatar thermos in the southern suburbs. So that she would not lie in Bäckström’s Hästens bed and make a mess of his existence. There was also all the advice and good deeds he had portioned out. Completely free of charge and even to complete vegetables like Anna Holt.
A bit like you, Bäckström, thought Bäckström. A player and an operator.
“How’s the pea soup at this joint?” asked Bäckström as soon as he sat down and knocked back a little Thursday dram to prepare the way for his lunch.
“The best in town,” said GeGurra. “Homemade with extra pork and sausage. Real meat sausage and that old-fashioned fat pork, you know. You get it in slices, of course, thick slices. On a separate plate on the side.”
“Then it’ll be pea soup,” Bäckström decided.
“Do you want a warm punch with it?”
“A regular shot and a pilsner is fine,” said Bäckström. Warm punch? Does he think I’m a faggot, or what?
“Personally I’ll have the grilled flounder. And a mineral water,” said GeGurra, nodding in confirmation to the white-clad waiter.
Fish, thought Bäckström. Are we homos, or what?
Nice place, thought Bäckström. It was basically empty as soon as the lunch rush was over and ideal for confidential conversations.
“How’s it going?” asked GeGurra, leaning forward.
“It’s rolling along. At a rapid pace, actually,” he added so that GeGurra wouldn’t get any ideas under his white hair.
“Starting to get the hang of that character Waltin,” Bäckström continued, and then in brief strokes he recounted his finds down in the central archive.
“I almost suspected as much. Sometimes he expressed himself in a peculiar way, to say the least.” GeGurra sighed.
“I get the idea this may have been something sexual,” said Bäckström. Ask the woman with the candlestick, he thought.
“Sexual? Now I don’t understand.”
“Possible motives,” Bäckström clarified, and then he also expanded on this line of reasoning.
“I won’t get mixed up in that part,” said GeGurra, shaking all his white hair almost deprecatingly. “How’s it going with the weapon?”
Won’t get mixed up with it, thought Bäckström. Who the hell does he think he is?
“Fifty million,” said Bäckström, rubbing his index finger against his thumb. “The weapon is ten mill. In itself nothing to scoff at, but now we’re talking fifty. If I find the weapon, then I find the murderer. There are more involved in this business than Waltin,” said Bäckström, letting GeGurra have a taste of his heavy police gaze.
“You think you can find the weapon and you can also solve the murder?”
“You betcha,” said Bäckström. “I have good leads on the weapon, and I’ve already found two of those involved. There are more, if you ask me.”
“I’m assuming that I can be anonymous,” said GeGurra. “I have to be kept out of it, as you understand. This sort of thing is not good for business.”
“Of course,” said Bäckström. And that part about fifty-fifty you can just forget, he thought.
A player and an operator, thought Bäckström as he sat in the taxi on his way back to work. Although not like me, he thought. A little too gay and a little too nervous when push comes to shove.
Thursday pea soup with extra pork and sausage, plenty of mustard, a couple shots and a large pilsner to get the system going. A few pancakes with whipped cream and jam on top and a real marvel for the little craw that was already rumbling like a blast furnace as he sank down behind his desk. Perhaps I ought to open the door so all the little thing finders out in the corridor get a chance to enjoy a really good lunch, thought Bäckström, who felt that a major fart was on its way.
He test fired carefully but it wouldn’t come out until his own little half-boss suddenly knocked and came into his office. Now, you little binder carrier, thought Bäckström. Giving him the evil eye, he sank down in the chair, eased up on his left buttock, and tightened his well-trained diaphragm. A sizeable barrel and not an ordinary lousy six pack like all the gym queers.
A completely formidable and juicy one. One of Bäckström’s best ever. A real orchestra finale. First a couple of noisy blasts with ass bassoon, a several-seconds-long solo on bowel trumpet, then a few concluding toots on anal flute.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” asked Bäckström, flexing lightly with both cheeks. There, you got a little something good to suck on, he thought. The little bastard looked ready to faint, and apparently he wanted to deliver a letter.
“Set it with the rest of the mildew,” said Bäckström, pointing at his overflowing desk. “I’ll get to it when I have time.” Damn what a hurry he was in, he thought.
The letter was from the Stockholm police department’s own female police chief. Just as skinny as that attack dyke Holt. Just as crazy as Holt, and certainly a sister in the same association of fairy and dyke constables.
Bäckström had received a summons to a gender sensitivity course that would start on Monday morning at nine o’clock and last the whole week. Police officials of the highest rank had noticed that Bäckström apparently lacked this mandatory feature in police training and intended to remedy the matter immediately. Accommodations were at some camp up in Roslagen. Not a request, but an order.
Now damn it this is war, thought Bäckström, tensing all his muscles from his navel on down.
50
After an hour and a half Johansson called on Holt’s cell.
“I’m sitting in a line of cars up on Essingeleden,” Holt explained. “See you in fifteen.”
“I thought there were blue lights on that car,” Johansson whined.
Most often cheerful, far too often furious. Surly sometimes, never whiny. Johansson must be worried about something, thought Holt with surprise.
If that’s the way it was, there was no trace of it twenty minutes later as she stepped into his conference room. He was entertaining himself with Lewin and Mattei, and there were only happy faces around the table.
“Coffee,” said Johansson, nodding at the tray. “I remember those times I was out in the field and drove like a car thief. Then I would always be in the mood for coffee afterward.”
“I thought it was Jarnebring who always drove,” said Holt.
“Bragging,” said Johansson. “Can you give us a quick summary, Anna?”
Curious twists of fortune with a parking ticket. A scrapped revolver and a vanished firing report. Seventy-five percent probability that they had found something that would trigger an earthquake, and not just in the neighborhood where they were sitting. It was high time to turn this over to the chief prosecutor in Stockholm and the murder investigation that the government had appointed.
“One can certainly get the impression that Waltin ran around and cleaned up after himself, and with that this is not our area any longer,” Holt concluded, supporting herself on the table and jutting her jaw for emphasis.
“We’ll get to that later,” said Johansson. “Now we’ll play devil’s advocate for a while. You start, Lisa.”
That Waltin was involved was still far from proven, according to Mattei. On the other hand it was quite certain that he had died fifteen years ago. In a drowning accident on Mallorca. Dead for a long time, and the worst conceivable alternative for anyone who was searching for a perpetrator in a murder investigation.
Tha
t he would have shot the prime minister seemed completely unlikely. In any event, the witnesses’ descriptions of the perpetrator did not match Waltin.
“Five foot nine. Barely taller than the victim. Slender and delicately built. Doesn’t match,” said Mattei. “Not with the witnesses and even less with the shot angle that the technicians describe. That points with high probability to a perpetrator who is at least six feet tall. Probably taller.”
But there certainly were some strange circumstances. That was not to say that Waltin had to be behind them. Previous experience showed that even police officers who did not have the slightest thing to hide could clean away papers and technical evidence. Through ordinary carelessness, if nothing else?
“I think nonetheless that the vicissitudes of this parking ticket do point in a definite direction,” Holt argued.
“Sure,” said Mattei. “Or else there’s just some kind of silly human explanation. Like that married man who preferred to remain in jail suspected of having killed his wife than admit that he was with her girlfriend when someone else murdered his wife.”
“I’ve actually had one just like that,” Johansson observed.
A series of strange circumstances. Particulars that didn’t even work as indices. Much less a chain of indices that could link Waltin to the vanished weapon, and the vanished weapon to a perpetrator who could be linked to Waltin, in order to finally link them both to the murder of a Swedish prime minister.
“Seventy-five percent probability that our bullet comes from the murder weapon. That’s what the whole thing boils down to,” said Mattei. “That’s not enough in court. Far from it,” she added.
“Take this about the weapon,” she continued. “A fundamental thought in the whole line of reasoning seems to be that someone, probably Waltin, is supposed to have come across a revolver from the tech squad in Stockholm. How could he do that? A high-ranking police chief at the secret police who was also an attorney. Who would someone like that have contact with at the tech squad at the Stockholm police?” Mattei looked questioningly at Holt.
“Wiijnbladh,” said Holt. “It’s alleged that Waltin knew our colleague Wiijnbladh, who was then working at the tech squad, and that he possibly could have come across the weapon through him.”
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