“Yes, yes, of course,” Stigson said, his cheeks suddenly ablaze. He shuffled through his papers nervously, then started to read once more.
“The following is a summary of information received from witness Britt-Marie Andersson,” Stigson read.
“At approximately ten o’clock on Wednesday evening Mrs. Holmberg phoned Mrs. Andersson to ask for her help with their neighbor, Danielsson. Mrs. Andersson went down to Danielsson and knocked on his door, whereupon Danielsson answered, evidently seriously intoxicated. She told him to keep the noise down, and if he didn’t, she threatened to call the police. Danielsson apologized and closed the door of his flat. Mrs. Andersson stayed outside for a couple minutes, listening, but when the gramophone was switched off she took the lift back up to her own apartment. Approximately a quarter of an hour later Danielsson phoned Mrs. Andersson’s landline. He started shouting at her and generally behaved disgracefully. He told her that she shouldn’t stick her nose into things that didn’t concern her. Then he hung up. According to Mrs. Andersson, the time was then approximately half past ten in the evening.”
“That seems to fit,” Alm interjected. “I got the first lists of calls through just before this meeting. According to the list of calls made from the victim’s phone—I haven’t received the neighbors’ yet—he made a call from his phone to another landline at 22.27 that evening. Just before half past ten, in other words. Let me see the interview with Andersson,” Alm said.
“There you go,” Stigson said, passing Alm a printed sheet of A4.
“Yes,” Alm said with a nod, after glancing at the sheet. “It’s Andersson’s home phone number. That’s the last number Danielsson called, in fact.”
Because then he was beaten to death and robbed by our old hero Roly Stålhammar, Bäckström thought, finding it hard to conceal his delight.
“There’s something else that’s bothering me. I might as well mention it now before I forget,” Alm said, and for some reason he looked at Bäckström.
“Yes, perhaps that would be best,” Bäckström said, smiling amiably.
“When I looked up Stålhammar’s details I found out that he lives on Järnvägsgatan in Sundbyberg. That’s only a few hundred meters from Ekensbergsgatan, where that Polish bloke found the raincoat and so on, the slippers and gloves. It’s more or less on the right route, so to speak. If you want to take the shortest route home from Hasselstigen to Järnvägsgatan, you pass Ekensbergsgatan more or less at the point where the Pole found the clothes.”
“Well, I never,” Bäckström said with a sly smile. “Who’d have thought it of a onetime youth worker?
“Stigson,” he went on. “That woman, Andersson? She never saw who Danielsson’s guest was? Unless you forgot to ask her, what with all the other stuff, I mean?”
“No. Of course I asked,” Stigson said, glancing nervously at Detective Inspector Annika Carlsson. “Of course I did. No. She never saw who he was. But when she spoke to Danielsson, she could hear someone else in the living room. But of course she never went inside the flat, so she didn’t see who it was.”
“I’ve thought of something else,” Bäckström said, for some reason looking at Alm.
“What?”
“You started off by saying that lots of Danielsson’s old friends got in touch as soon as they heard that he’d been murdered.”
“Yes.”
“But not Roland Stålhammar?”
“No,” Alm agreed. “He hasn’t been in touch.”
“Surely he out of all of them should have been? A former policeman and all that. Who was sitting getting pissed with the victim just before he died?” Bäckström elaborated, with evident satisfaction.
“Yes, that’s been bothering me too, in case you were wondering,” Alm said. “Assuming that he knows Danielsson was murdered, and assuming it was him who was there that evening, because we can’t be entirely certain in spite of what Jockey Gunnar says. If that is the case, then it bothers me a very great deal.”
“Mmh,” Bäckström said, nodding. The net’s closing, he thought. I wonder if I’ve got time to reward myself with a little marzipan cake and some coffee with a splash of cream?
“How about taking a short break to stretch our legs?” Bäckström said, looking at the time. “Shall we say quarter of an hour?” Perhaps now isn’t the time to talk about respect and authority, he thought, as Carlsson, her eyes narrowed, stormed out of the room at once.
No one raised any objections.
16.
Right, then, Bäckström thought, once he and his colleagues had settled back down again. Now all we need to do is tie things up, without getting too excited and rushing the job.
“Nadja,” Bäckström said, nodding genially at Nadja Högberg, “have you found out anything else about our victim?”
According to Nadja Högberg, most of her work was done now. Apart from Danielsson’s old limited company, which she was planning to look into over the weekend. But there also seemed to be a safe-deposit box that she hadn’t yet found. The keys fitted a box in a branch of Handelsbanken located on Valhallavägen in Stockholm, that much was straightforward. The problem was that neither Danielsson nor his company, according to the bank, had a box at that branch. The number of the box wasn’t clear from the keys, and because there were hundreds of boxes at that branch alone, finding the box wasn’t as simple as it seemed.
“The bank and I are still grappling with that,” Nadja Högberg said. “We’ll get to the bottom of it.”
One thing that she had already sorted out was the bundles of slips and receipts that the forensics team had found in Danielsson’s flat.
“There are loads of them,” Nadja said. “Winning slips from Solvalla totaling more than half a million; taxi receipts, restaurant receipts, and loads of other invoices for everything from office furniture to paintwork in an old storehouse out in Flemingsberg, south of the city. In total, the invoices and receipts come to more than a million, and they’re all dated from the last few months.”
“The bastard must have been a demon with the horses,” Bäckström said. He had been only half listening. Half a million in a few months, he thought.
“I don’t believe that for a moment,” Nadja said, shaking her head. “Betting on the horses is a zero-sum game. If you’re lucky and know a bit about horses, you might just break even in the long run. He was trading in winning slips, that’s all. It’s no more complicated than that, but I daresay a few of them are his own. He sold them on to someone who needed to explain to the tax office how he had been able to buy a new Mercedes even though he didn’t have any income. The same with the receipts. He sold them to people who used them as tax-deductible expenses for their businesses. Presumably he had the contacts from when he was active as an accountant and auditor, but it doesn’t really demand any particular skills.”
Better than collecting empties like all the other pissheads, Bäckström thought.
“Excuse me,” Alm said, with an apologetic gesture as his cell phone started to ring.
“Alm,” Alm said, then he sat and mostly listened for a couple minutes as Bäckström glared at him with growing anger.
“Sorry,” Alm said when the call was over.
“Not at all,” Bäckström said. “Don’t let us bother you. I’m sure it was vitally important.”
“That was Niemi,” Alm said. “I took the opportunity to call him during the break, to let him know about Roly Stålhammar.”
“Are Stålhammar’s prints in the register?” Bäckström asked. “Why didn’t you tell us about this before?”
“No,” Alm said, shaking his head. “Stålhammar’s prints aren’t on file officially, but he did give Niemi a set of prints in conjunction with an old murder in Stockholm years ago. Stålhammar and his partner—wasn’t his name Brännström?—had gone to see an old junkie living on Pipersgatan, more or less next door to police headquarters. There was no one home, but they took the opportunity to go through his lodgings, since they were there anyway. Br�
�nnström thought there was a funny smell in the flat and pulled out the bottom half of an old sofa bed in the living room. And that’s where they found the tenant. Stuffed into his sofa bed with an ice pick in his skull. So when the forensics team arrived, Roly and Brännström had to provide a full set of prints so that theirs could be ruled out from the search.”
“So you don’t think they were the ones who did it?” Bäckström said with a grin. “I seem to remember that Brännström was fond of long-distance skiing and winter sports.” Another fucking idiot, he thought. He and Stålhammar must have made a right pair. The blind leading the blind.
“This was in July,” Alm said. “The victim had been lying there for a week, so if you don’t mind …”
“By all means,” Bäckström said.
“To get to the point,” Alm said, “Niemi was calling to say that he had just compared Stålhammar’s prints with the ones they found on the glasses, bottles, and cutlery in Danielsson’s flat.”
“And?” Bäckström said.
“Well,” Alm said. “They’re Stålhammar’s prints.”
“Would you believe it?” Bäckström said. “Such a nice, decent man as well.”
“Okay, this is what we’re going to do,” Bäckström, who had just finished thinking, said. The fact that it had taken only thirty seconds showed that he was starting to feel like his old self again, he thought.
“Annika,” he said, nodding toward Carlsson. “Talk to the prosecutor about what we’ve got on Stålhammar. It would be great if we could just go and pick him up and lock him away for the weekend. Then we can start on him on Monday morning. Three days in a cell without a drop of alcohol usually works well on old pissheads.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Annika Carlsson said, without pursing her mouth at all.
“Nadja, you keep trying to find the number of Danielsson’s bank box. It’s probably full of a load of old receipts and shit like that. Sort that out with the prosecutor as well, so we don’t have to deal with any crap later.
“The victim’s old friends,” Bäckström went on, nodding at Alm. “Get photographs of them and we’ll do another round of the neighbors and see if we can’t winkle out a few eyewitnesses as well. Preferably people who saw Stålhammar rolling round the neighborhood wearing slippers, washing-up gloves, and a blood-drenched raincoat.”
“I’ve done that with eleven of them already,” Alm said, digging out a plastic sleeve from his folder. “Driving-license shots or passport pictures of all of them. I’ve got address lists. We may have to finish that off later, but Stålhammar’s picture is already in there.”
“Excellent. In that case I think I’m going to start by borrowing your pictures,” Bäckström said without explaining why. “Full steam ahead now, Alm. Stålhammar is priority number one now, and everything else is no priority at all. Agreed?”
Alm contented himself with nodding and shrugging. Like all bad losers, Bäckström thought.
“You’re coming with me,” Bäckström said, pointing a fat finger at Sergeant Stigson. “We’re going to take a drive past Stålhammar’s house and have a discreet little look at what the bastard’s up to. Well, I think that’s everything, at least for the time being.”
“What about me?” Felicia Pettersson said, pointing at herself just to be sure.
“Yes, you,” Bäckström said with extra emphasis. “Have a think about that paperboy. That lad, Soot— Him, Akofeli. There’s something about him that doesn’t make sense.”
“But what could he have to do with Stålhammar?” Felicia looked questioningly at Bäckström.
“Good question,” Bäckström said, already heading for the door. “It’s worth thinking about, Felicia,” he went on. There, that gave the pretty little darkie something to chew on as well, Bäckström thought. What the fuck did Akofeli have to do with their murderer? Not the tiniest little thing, if you ask me, he thought.
“Get a car for us, Stigson,” Bäckström said as soon as they had got far enough away from Annika Carlsson’s sensitive hearing.
“Already sorted,” Stigson said. “I’ve got Stålhammar’s address. Järnvägsgatan number—”
“Later,” Bäckström interrupted. “Give that woman, Andersson, a call and ask if we can call in at Hasselstigen.”
“Sure, boss,” Stigson said. “Are you thinking of showing her the pictures of Stålhammar?”
“I thought I might take a look at her boobs first,” Bäckström said. He was starting to feel like his old self again. Everything in its own good time, including pictures of Stålhammar, he thought.
“Boobs,” Stigson said, sighing and shaking his shaved head disparagingly. “I promise you, boss. We’re talking melons here. Massive great melons.”
17.
Oh, for fuck’s sake! Bäckström thought, as soon as she opened the door. Britt-Marie Andersson was an old crone! She had to be at least sixty, he thought. This from a man in the prime of life, who wouldn’t be fifty-five until the autumn.
Big blond hair, porcelain-blue eyes, red mouth, teeth that were so white that they probably were porcelain, sunbed brown, her flowery dress a fair way above her knees, a generous neckline, and there was no way she was ever going to sleep on her front. What a fucking fate, Bäckström thought. At least sixty, and as a result she’d missed her chance at the Bäckström super-salami way back before the turn of the millennium.
To complete the picture, she also had a little dog that ran round yapping. One of those Mexican cockroaches that you could drown in a teacup. Just to underline the point, his name was Little Sweetie.
“There, there,” his owner said soothingly, picking up the wretched creature and kissing it on the nose.
“Little Sweetie always gets jealous when Mommy has gentlemen callers,” Mrs. Andersson explained, blinking and smiling with those red lips.
You should probably take care not to end up in a threesome with him and little Stigson, then, Bäckström thought. He seldom missed a chance to think along those lines.
After that he had quickly pulled out the pictures of Danielsson’s friends to put an end to this farce and get away from there. Their hostess had sat down on a low pink plush armchair and had directed her guests to the flowery sofa opposite. And all the while Little Sweetie ran around yapping until his owner took pity on him and lifted him onto her lap.
The folk dancer had been in a state of bliss. Reverse pedophilia, Bäckström thought, and when old crone Andersson leaned over the table to get a closer look at pisshead Danielsson’s pisshead friends, little Stigson’s eyes had gone completely vacant.
“I recognize almost all of them,” Mrs. Andersson said. She straightened up and took some deep breaths just to make sure, as she flashed a broad smile at her guests. “They’re Danielsson’s old friends. They’ve been coming and going all the years I’ve lived here, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of them sober. Isn’t that one supposed to be an old policeman?” she asked, putting her long red fingernail on Roland Stålhammar’s passport photo.
“That’s right,” Bäckström said. “Retired.”
“I daresay he was the one in Danielsson’s flat when all that noise was going on, the evening before he got killed.”
“What makes you say that, Mrs. Andersson?” Bäckström asked.
“I saw him when I was out walking Little Sweetie,” Britt-Marie Andersson said. “He was walking down Råsundavägen. It was around eight o’clock. He could well have been on his way round to see Danielsson.”
“But you never saw the person who was inside Danielsson’s apartment?” Bäckström asked, simultaneously giving Stigson the evil eye.
“No, I never saw who it was,” Mrs. Andersson said. “But I don’t know how many times I’ve seen that Roly, I think that’s his name, coming and going to Danielsson’s place.”
“Anyone else?” Bäckström said, gesturing toward the heap of photographs.
“That one’s actually my ex-brother-in-law, Halvar Söderman,” Mrs. Andersson said, p
ointing at the photograph of a former car dealer, Halvar “Halfy” Söderman, seventy-one years old. “I was married to his older brother, Per Söderman, Per A. Söderman,” Mrs. Andersson clarified, placing particular emphasis on the A.
“He was a completely different sort of person to his younger brother; he’s a real waste of space. I can assure you of that, but sadly my husband died ten years ago.”
Probably died when a heavy weight landed on him, Bäckström thought. He glanced one last time at Britt-Marie Andersson’s undeniably remarkable assets, thanked her for her help, got the reluctant Stigson to his feet, and said goodbye. Stigson looked as if Bäckström had just torn his heart out, and against all the rules, he had leaned forward and given the old crone a hug before they finally got out of there.
“What a woman, what a woman,” Jan O. Stigson said, and sighed as he got in behind the wheel to drive them to Järnvägsgatan so that they could take a discreet look at where Stålhammar lived.
“It hasn’t occurred to you that she’s old enough to be your grandmother?” Bäckström asked.
“Maybe my mother,” Stigson corrected. “Think about that, Bäckström. Having a mother with a body like that.”
“You’re obviously very fond of your mother,” Bäckström said slyly. The same mother who must have exposed him to incestuous abuse at an early age, he thought.
“Isn’t everyone?” Sergeant Stigson said, looking at his boss in surprise. “I mean, doesn’t everyone love their mom?”
Definitely a victim of incest. Poor bastard, Bäckström thought, but contented himself with a nod.
18.
Bäckström had done everything by the book. First he got Stigson to do a few turns around the block where Stålhammar lived. No sign of him.
Then they had gone inside the building he lived in and listened to his apartment through the mail slot. Not a sound.
Backstrom: He Who Kills the Dragon (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Original) Page 8