The building at number 1 Hasselstigen had been built in the autumn of 1945, six months after the end of the war. Locals used to say it was the building that God, or at least its landlord, had given up on. It was a five-story brick building divided into thirty small apartments, each containing just one or two rooms and a kitchen. It was more than sixty years old and had long been in dire need of external renovation, rewiring, and pretty much everything in between.
Even the tenants had seen better days. About twenty of them were single, and most of those were pensioners. There were eight old couples, all of them retired, and one middle-aged woman of forty-nine who lived in a two-room flat with her twenty-nine-year-old son, who was on disability. The neighbors thought he was a bit odd. Nice, harmless, even helpful when called upon, but he had always lived at home with his mom. Recently he had been living there alone, ever since his mother had a stroke and had spent the last few months in a convalescent home.
Eleven of the tenants had a morning paper delivered, six Dagens Nyheter and five Svenska Dagbladet, and for the past year or so Septimus Akofeli had been the person who made sure they got delivered each morning. Regular as clockwork, at about six o’clock every morning—he’d never missed a single delivery.
A total of forty-one people lived in the building on Hasselstigen. Or forty, to be precise, since one of them had just been murdered, and by Thursday afternoon the police in Solna had got hold of a list of everyone in the building, including the victim.
In the hours between that first call being received by the emergency control room and the list being supplied, a fair amount had happened. Among other things, the head of the investigating team from the Solna Police, Detective Superintendent Evert Bäckström, had arrived at the scene of the murder at twenty minutes to ten that morning. Just three and a half hours after his colleagues in “the pit” got the call, and, frankly, a lightning-quick response, considering that this was Bäckström.
There was a very personal explanation for this. The previous day, the staff medical officer of the Stockholm Police had made him promise to make changes in his private life and had listed the medicinal alternatives that—if Bäckström carried on being Bäckström—had scared the life out of even this particular patient. And this had at least led to a sober evening and a sleepless night, after which Bäckström had decided to walk to his new job in the crime unit of the Western District.
An endless road to Calvary, some four kilometers long. Under a merciless sun, the whole way from his cozy abode on Inedalsgatan on Kungsholmen, right out to the main police station on Sundbybergsvägen in Solna. And in temperatures that were beyond human endurance and which would have beaten an Olympic marathon runner.
5.
At a quarter past nine on the morning of Thursday, May 15, the sun was already high in a blue and cloudless sky. Even though it was only the middle of May, it was already twenty-six degrees in the shade when Bäckström, bathed in his own sweat, crossed the bridge over the Karlberg Channel. Being a careful, forward-thinking sort of person, he had dressed for the trials ahead of him. A Hawaiian shirt, shorts, sandals without socks, even a bottle of chilled mineral water that he had put in his pocket so that if it proved necessary he could quickly counteract any looming attack of dehydration.
None of this had helped. Even though he had been voluntarily sober for a whole day for the first time in his adult life—he hadn’t touched a drop in twenty-five and a half hours, to be precise—he had never felt worse.
I’m going to kill that fucking witch doctor, Bäckström thought. So much for hangovers. He hadn’t touched a drop and was now into his second dry day, and he still felt as lively as an eagle that had flown into a power cable.
At that moment his cell phone rang. It was the duty desk in Solna.
“We’ve been trying to get hold of you, Bäckström,” the duty officer said. “I’ve been looking for you since seven o’clock this morning.”
“I had an early meeting at National Crime,” Bäckström lied, because that had been round about the time that he had finally drifted off to sleep.
“What’s up?” he asked, to fend off any further questions.
“We’ve got a murder case for you. Our team on the ground could use a bit of advice and leadership. Someone’s killed an old pensioner. I hear the scene looks like an abattoir.”
“What have we got?” Bäckström grunted, and felt not the slightest bit better in spite of the good news.
“I don’t know much more than that. Murder, definitely murder. The victim’s fairly old, apparently, a pensioner—like I said, they reckon he doesn’t look too pretty. Perpetrator unknown. We haven’t even got a description to put out over the radio, so that’s all I know. Where are you, anyway?”
“I’ve just crossed the Karlberg Channel,” Bäckström said. “I usually try to walk to work if it isn’t raining too much. It’s always good to get a bit of exercise,” he clarified.
“I see,” the duty officer said, scarcely able to conceal his surprise. “If you like, I can send a car to pick you up.”
“Good idea,” Bäckström said. “Make sure they know it’s urgent. I’ll be waiting for them outside that soccer hooligans’ hangout on the Solna side of the bridge.”
Seven minutes later a patrol car had appeared, blue lights flashing, performed a U-turn, and pulled up by the entrance to AIK Stockholm’s supporters’ clubhouse. Both the driver and his younger female colleague had got out of the car and nodded amiably at him. Evidently they had an appreciation of the way things should be done, because the driver held open the back door on his side so that Bäckström wouldn’t have to sit in the seat behind the passenger seat that was usually reserved for suspects.
“So here you are, Bäckström, waiting in classic criminal territory,” the male officer said, gesturing toward the bushes behind Bäckström.
“Holm, by the way,” he added, pointing with his thumb at the chest of his own uniform. “That’s Hernandez,” he said, nodding toward his female colleague.
“What do you mean, classic territory?” Bäckström said once he’d squeezed into the backseat, mainly because his thoughts had already turned to Holm’s female colleague. Long dark hair tied up in an artistic knot, a smile that could light up the whole of Råsunda Stadium, and a top deck that was putting her blue uniform shirt under serious strain.
“What do you mean, classic territory?” he repeated.
“Oh, you know, that prostitute. This was where she was found, wasn’t it? Well, bits of her, anyway. The old murder that everyone reckons was committed by that coroner and that friend of his, a GP. Mind you, who knows? The head of crime out here, old Toivonen, apparently has an entirely different theory about what happened.”
“You must have been involved in that, Bäckström?” Hernandez put in, turning toward him and firing off a brilliant smile. “When was it? I mean, when did they find her? I wasn’t born then, but it must have been sometime during the seventies? Thirty-five, forty years ago? Something like that?”
“The summer of 1984,” Bäckström said curtly. And one more word from you, you little trollop, and I’ll see you get put on traffic duty. In Chile, he thought, glaring at Hernandez.
“Oh, 1984. Okay, I had been born, then,” Hernandez said, clearly not about to give up and still showing off her fine set of bright white teeth.
“I don’t doubt it. You look a lot older, though,” Bäckström said, not about to give up either. Suck on that, you carpet-munching bitch, he thought.
“We’ve got quite a bit to tell you about this current case,” Holm said by way of distraction, clearing his throat carefully as Hernandez turned her back on Bäckström and started looking through her notebook to make sure she got her facts right. “We’ve just come from there.”
“Okay, I’m listening,” Bäckström said.
Holm and Hernandez had been the first officers on the scene. They’d just stopped for coffee at the twenty-four-hour gas station behind the Solna shopping center when t
hey heard the call over police radio. Blue lights and sirens, and three minutes later they were at number 1 Hasselstigen.
Their colleague over the radio had advised caution. He thought the “male individual” who had called in wasn’t reacting like normal people do when they call with news like that. He showed no sign of losing it and had no trouble controlling his vocal cords. In short, he was suspiciously calm and collected, the way some nuts sound when they call the police to tell them about their latest exploits.
“The guy who called in was delivering papers. An immigrant. Seems a nice lad. I think we can probably forget about him, if you ask me,” Holm summarized.
And who the hell would ask someone like you what you think? Bäckström thought.
“What about the victim? What do we know about him?”
“He was the tenant of the flat, name Karl Danielsson. Older man, single, sixty-eight years old. Retired, in other words,” Holm clarified.
“We’re sure of that?” Bäckström said.
“Quite sure,” Holm said. “I recognized him at once. I picked him up for being drunk and disorderly at Solvalla racecourse a few years back. He kicked up a right fuss afterward, reported me and the rest of the team for pretty much anything he could think of. And that wasn’t exactly the first time he’d been picked up for that sort of thing. Social problems, alcohol, all that. Socially marginalized, as they say these days.”
“Your standard pisshead, you mean,” Bäckström said.
“Well, yes. That’s another way of putting it,” Holm said, and suddenly it sounded as if he wanted to change the subject.
Five minutes later they had dropped Bäckström off outside the door of number 1 Hasselstigen, and Holm had wished him luck. He and Hernandez were heading off to the station to write up their reports, but if there was anything else they could help with, Bäckström was more than welcome to get in touch.
And what the fuck would I want to do that for? Bäckström thought, as the car pulled away, not bothering to thank them for the lift.
6.
Same as usual, Bäckström thought. Beyond the cordons that had been set up in front of the building crowded the usual collection of journalists and photographers, neighbors, and the generally curious who had nothing better to do. Plus the usual rabble, of course, who had probably ended up there without even wondering how it had happened. Among them were three suntanned youths who took the opportunity to comment on Bäckström’s clothing and appearance as he squeezed under the cordon with a certain amount of difficulty.
Bäckström had turned back and glared at them, to register their appearance in his memory for the day when they eventually met in his own place of work. It was only a matter of time, and, when the day finally arrived, he intended to make it a memorable experience for the little shits.
As he passed the young uniformed officer standing by the door of the building, he had given his first order in connection with this new murder investigation:
“Call surveillance and get them to send a couple guys to take some nice pictures of our charming audience,” Bäckström said.
“It’s already done,” his colleague informed him. “That was the first thing the Anchor said to me when she arrived. Our colleagues from surveillance must have been here taking pictures for a couple hours now,” he added, for some reason.
“Anchor? What bloody anchor?”
“Annika Carlsson. You know, our tall brunette colleague, used to work in robbery. Nicknamed the Anchor.”
“You mean that fucking virago?” Bäckström said.
“I wouldn’t like to comment, Bäckström,” his colleague said with a grin. “But obviously, you can’t help hearing things.”
“Such as?” Bäckström said suspiciously.
“Well, it’s probably best to avoid getting into an arm-wrestling contest with her,” his colleague said.
Bäckström had contented himself with a shake of the head. Where the hell are we heading? he wondered as he stepped inside the door of the building at number 1 Hasselstigen. What the hell is happening to the Swedish Police? Faggots, dykes, darkies, and the usual yes-men. Not a single ordinary police constable as far as the eye can see.
At the crime scene everything looked the way it usually did when someone had beaten an old pisshead to death in his own flat. In short, things looked even worse than they usually did in the home of an old pisshead. This particular example was lying on his back on the hall rug just inside the door, with his feet facing the door, his legs apart, and his arms stretched out above his crushed skull, almost like he was praying. To judge by the smell, his gray gabardine trousers had filled up with excrement and urine when he died. There was a meter-wide pool of blood on the floor. The walls on both sides of the narrow hallway were splattered with blood from floor to ceiling, and there were even traces of blood on the center of the ceiling.
Bloody hell, Bäckström thought, shaking his head. Really, he ought to call Beautiful Homes with a tip-off so all those interior designer queers could finally get something serious to chew on, something with the real common touch. A little My-Lovely-Home report from social group seventeen, Bäckström thought. Then his thoughts were interrupted by someone tapping on his shoulder.
“Hello, Bäckström. Good to see you,” Detective Inspector Annika Carlsson, thirty-three, said with a friendly nod.
“Hello,” Bäckström said, making an effort to sound less rough than he felt.
A woman who was half a head taller than him, even though he was a tall, well-built man in the prime of life. Long legs, narrow waist, irritatingly fit, and with everything in the right place. If she just let her hair grow a bit and put on a short skirt, she could even pass for a completely normal woman. Apart from her height, of course, but it was presumably too late to do anything about that, and with a bit of luck she might have stopped growing by now, even though she was still wet behind the ears.
“Have you got any particular instructions, Bäckström? The forensics team are done with their preliminary checks, and as soon as they’ve got the body off to the forensics lab you can take a look at our crime scene.”
“Later,” Bäckström said, shaking his head. “Who the fuck is that?” he asked, nodding toward a slight, dark-skinned figure sitting crouched against a wall at the far end of the shared landing. With a closed, melancholy expression on his face and a cloth bag with newspapers sticking out of it over his shoulder.
“That’s our paperboy, the one who made the call,” Carlsson said.
“Who’d have thought it?” Bäckström said. “So that’ll be why he’s got a bag of newspapers hanging from his shoulder.”
“No flies on you,” Carlsson said with a smile. “To be more precise, he’s got five Dagens Nyheter and four Svenska Dagbladet. The victim’s copy of Svenska is lying over there by the door,” she went on, nodding toward a folded newspaper on the floor by the entrance to the victim’s flat. “He’d already delivered one copy of Dagens Nyheter to an old woman on the ground floor.”
“What do we know about him, then? The paperboy?”
“Well, to start with it looks like he’s completely clean,” Annika Carlsson said. “Forensics have checked him out and they didn’t find any traces at all on his body or clothes. Considering the state of things in there, he’d have been completely drenched in blood if he was the one who attacked our victim. He told us himself that he felt the victim’s face, his cheek, to be more accurate, and when he realized he was completely stiff, he knew that the victim was dead.”
“So he’s studying medicine, is he?” Bloody hell, Bäckström mused. The little sooty clearly wasn’t lacking ambition.
“I believe he saw a lot of dead bodies in his former homeland,” Carlsson said, this time without smiling.
“Did he take the opportunity to slip anything into his pockets?” Bäckström asked, falling back on old instincts as far as sooties like that were concerned.
“He’s been searched. That was the first thing the patrol did when they got
here. In his pockets he was carrying a folder containing his driving license, an ID card from the paper that handles distribution of the papers out here, a small amount of money in coins and notes—about a hundred kronor, I think, mostly coins. And a cell phone that belongs to him. And we’ve made a note of the number, in case you’re wondering. If he did take anything, he didn’t have it on him, and we’ve already searched the communal areas of the building, so he didn’t hide anything there.”
Fucking hell. They’re lazy bastards as well, Bäckström thought, not ready to give up.
“Did he make any calls, then?”
“According to what he says, he only made one call. Emergency services, 112. They put him through to our colleagues in the pit. He says the only person he spoke to was the operator there, but obviously we’re going to check that out. He’s on the list of phone numbers we’ll have to investigate.”
“Has he got a name, then?” Bäckström said.
“Septimus Akofeli, twenty-five years old, a refugee from Somalia, Swedish citizenship, lives in Rinkeby. We’ve taken fingerprints and a DNA sample, but we haven’t had time to check them yet. But I’m pretty sure he is who he says he is.”
“What did you say his name was?” Bäckström said. What a bloody name, he thought.
“Septimus Akofeli,” Annika Carlsson replied. “One of the reasons I haven’t let him go yet is that I thought you might want to talk to him.”
“No,” Bäckström said, shaking his head. “As far as I’m concerned, you can send him home. But I thought I might take a look at our crime scene, on the other hand. If those wannabe academics from forensics are going to be finished anytime soon.”
“Peter Niemi and Jorge Hernandez, known as Chico,” Annika Carlsson said with a nod. “They’re part of our forensics team out here in Solna, and we couldn’t ask for better, if you ask me.”
Backstrom: He Who Kills the Dragon (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Original) Page 2