Backstrom: He Who Kills the Dragon (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Original)

by Leif Gw Persson

  “Well, hell, no, now that I come to think about it. That hundred wasn’t enough and the money-grabbing Iraqi who was driving kicked me out on Råsundavägen. Not the end of the world, admittedly, since it was only a couple hundred meters from Kalle’s door, but I had to do the last bit on foot.”

  “Did you get a receipt?”

  “I would have,” Stålhammar said. “I used to give all my receipts to Kalle. He used to sell them on to some old pal who deals in white goods. But the bastard just drove off.”

  “So you walked the last bit?” Bäckström clarified. He’s not that stupid after all, the old drunk, he thought.

  “What happened next?” Bäckström asked.

  First they had divided the money. More or less. Stålhammar got 10,300 in his hand, ten thousand-kronor notes and three hundreds, but because Danielsson didn’t have any change Stålhammar let him keep the last ten.

  “My old mate, it’s hardly the end of the world,” Stålhammar had said with a shrug.

  Then they had eaten, drunk, and talked. They started sometime around half past eight with pork chops and kidney beans, a few lagers and chasers. When the food was finished Kalle had mixed himself a vodka and tonic, whereas Stålhammar preferred his neat. They had talked some more, both of them in an excellent mood, and Kalle had put on some old Evert Taube albums.

  “He knew his stuff, that man,” Stålhammar said with feeling. “Hell, there hasn’t been a decent song written in this country since Evert cashed in his chips.”

  “How long were you playing music for?” Annika Carlsson asked.

  “Quite a while,” Stålhammar said, looking at her in surprise. “It was one of those old vinyl things, an LP, and I suppose we played it through a couple times. ‘Old Highland Rover, a boat from Aberdeen, she lay off San Pedro and took on gasoline,’ ” Stålhammar sang quietly. “You hear how good he was, Carlsson? The words are still in there, like a comfy pair of shoes,” he declared.

  “How long were you singing for?” Bäckström asked.

  “Until some mad old crone knocked on the door and started shouting and yelling. I was standing in the living room listening to Evert, so I didn’t see her, but I couldn’t help hearing her, the way she was carrying on.”

  “What time was that?” Bäckström persisted.

  “I haven’t got a clue,” Stålhammar said, shrugging. “But I know what time it was when I got home and called Marja, because I looked at my watch first. You don’t want to call people in the middle of the night, after all.”

  “What time was that, then?”

  “Half past eleven, if I remember rightly,” Stålhammar said. “I remember thinking that it was a bit too last-minute, but by then I’d got the idea in my head. So I plucked up courage and gave her a call. Mind you, I did a bit of private celebrating at home first. Had a bit left in the cupboard, and I suppose it must have been while I was drinking that I got the idea of heading down south.”

  “What time did you leave Danielsson, then?” Bäckström said. How the hell do we check that last bit? he thought.

  “As soon as the old crone started shrieking I realized it was time to go home and get some sleep. So I said goodbye to Kalle and set off home. It couldn’t have taken more than ten minutes, allowing for a couple wrong turns on the way,” Stålhammar said, smiling and shaking his head. “The party had fallen a bit flat, if I can put it like that, and Kalle had got the hump and had phoned the old woman who had been down shouting at us. He was standing there arguing with her when I left.”

  “Danielsson was on the phone shouting at his neighbor when you left?” Bäckström repeated.

  “Exactly,” Stålhammar agreed. “So it felt like the right time to head home for some peace and quiet.

  “God, it’s a wretched business,” Stålhammar went on, rubbing his eyes with his knuckles again.

  “While I was lying there having sweet dreams about Marja, some mad bastard is breaking into Kalle’s and beating him to death.”

  “What makes you think someone broke in?” Bäckström asked.

  “That’s what Flash said,” Stålhammar said, looking in surprise first at Bäckström, then at Annika Carlsson. From what he had heard, the door of Kalle’s flat was hanging off its hinges. Some bastard had broken in and robbed him. Beaten him to death as he was lying there asleep.

  “When you left,” Bäckström said, to change the subject, “do you remember if Kalle locked the door?”

  “He always did. Kalle was a cautious man,” Stålhammar said. “Not that I gave it a second thought, but I’m absolutely sure he would have done. I used to tease him about it. The fact that he always locked himself in. I never use the safety lock when I’m at home.”

  “Was he afraid of anyone?” Bäckström asked. “If he always locked the door?”

  “I suppose he didn’t want anyone to break in and steal his things. He had some valuable stuff, after all.”

  “Such as?” Bäckström asked. He had been in the flat and had seen it in all its shabby glory. Here we go, he thought.

  “Well,” Stålhammar said, and it looked like he was thinking hard. “His old record collection must have been worth quite a bit. And that desk he had, that was valuable.”

  “The one in his bedroom?” Bäckström said. How the hell could anyone ever have lifted that? And how the hell could anyone like Stålhammar ever have made it into the police? he thought.

  “That’s the one.” Stålhammar nodded. “Antiques. Kalle had a few things like that. Genuine old carpets, loads of really nice old things.”

  “I have a few problems with what you’re saying,” Bäckström said. “When we found him, the door was unlocked and there were no signs of forced entry on it. From the inside you can lock it either with the key or the catch. From the outside you can only lock it with a key. When our colleagues got there it was wide open, but there were no marks on it. The forensics team think that when the culprit left he pulled the door shut behind him, but because the balcony door in the living room was ajar, the draft pulled the front door open again. How do you explain that?”

  “Explain?” Stålhammar said in surprise. “If that’s what forensics say, then it must be right. Don’t ask me what the hell I think about it. I’m an old detective. Not a forensics expert. Ask Pelle Niemi or one of his guys.”

  “My colleagues and I are working another line of thought,” Bäckström said, with a nod toward Annika Carlsson. “We believe that Kalle Danielsson must have let the perpetrator in because it was someone he knew and trusted.” Try that on for size, he thought.

  “You’re on the wrong track there, Bäckström,” Stålhammar said, shaking his head. “Which one of our old friends would have any reason to murder Kalle?”

  “You don’t have any suggestions?” Bäckström said. “I and my colleague Carlsson here were rather hoping you might have.”

  “Well, the only one of our old friends who I can think of would probably be Manhattan. From the old gang, I mean. He was the only one who had a grudge against Kalle.”

  “Manhattan? Manhattan as in New York?”

  “Hell, no,” Stålhammar said. “As in that disgusting bloody drink made from whiskey and liqueur. How the hell could anyone ever get the idea of pouring liqueur into whiskey? Ought to be against the law.”

  “Manhattan,” Bäckström repeated.

  “Manne Hansson,” Stålhammar explained. “Known as Manhattan among his friends. Used to be a bartender at the old Carlton when he was still working. Could be a mean bastard when he’d had a few. He put some money into some company on Kalle’s advice and evidently it all went to hell. So he wasn’t happy.”

  “Manne Hansson,” Bäckström repeated. “Where can we get hold of him, then?”

  “That won’t be so easy, I’m afraid,” Roland Stålhammar said with a smile. “Your best bet is Solna Cemetery. Apparently his kids scattered his ashes in the memorial grove there to keep costs down.”

  “And when was that?” Bäckström said. What have
I done to deserve this? he thought.

  “A fuck of a long time ago,” Stålhammar said. “Must be a good ten years, if you ask me.”

  “There’s one thing I’m wondering, Roland,” Annika Carlsson said. “You used to be one of us, so you know as much about the whole business of checking phone records as I do.”

  “I can still remember a few of the old tricks,” Stålhammar agreed, looking self-conscious.

  “When you left Kalle Danielsson he was on the phone shouting at his neighbor. We’ve checked that call. He made it just before ten-thirty. Then you say you walked home and that it took you something like ten minutes. Which would mean that you got home at about twenty to eleven.”

  “That makes sense,” Stålhammar said with a nod.

  “Then you say you called your friend in Malmö at half past eleven or so.”

  “Yes, I’m sure of that. Because I looked at the time just before I called. Didn’t want to call too late, like I said.”

  “So what did you do before that? You get home at twenty to eleven, and call her at half past eleven. That’s fifty minutes. Almost an hour. So what were you doing?”

  “I told you,” Stålhammar said with a look of surprise.

  “In that case I must have forgotten,” Annika Carlsson said. “Would you care to jog my memory?”

  “I had a drop or two left in the cupboard. And I had something to celebrate, so I started by drinking that. Then I called Marja. And, well, I suppose the blood started to flow a bit while I was sitting there having a little drink,” Stålhammar said with a crooked smile.

  “Fifty minutes,” Annika Carlsson repeated, exchanging a quick glance with Bäckström.

  “Must have been a fairly serious drop,” Bäckström said.

  “Don’t be like that, Bäckström,” Stålhammar said. “I suppose I was just sitting there thinking about things.”

  “On a completely different subject,” Bäckström said, “do you happen to remember if Kalle Danielsson had a briefcase or attaché case? One of those smart ones, leather, brass locks?”

  “Yes, he did,” Stålhammar said, nodding. “Light brown leather. A proper director’s briefcase. The last time I saw it was when I was there to eat with him, the evening before he got murdered. I definitely saw it.”

  “You definitely saw it?” Bäckström said. “How can you be so sure?”

  “He’d put it on top of the television,” Stålhammar said. “In the living room where we were eating. A fucking weird place to put a briefcase. Okay, I haven’t got a briefcase like that, but if I did, I don’t think I’d put it on top of the television. Why do you ask?”

  “It’s missing,” Bäckström said.

  “Oh,” Stålhammar said with a shrug. “It was there when I left. It was still on top of the television.”

  “When we got there the next morning it was gone,” Bäckström said. “You haven’t got any ideas about where it might have got to?”

  “Come on, Bäckström, give it up!” Stålhammar said, glaring at him with his deep-set eyes.

  “I think we’ll take a break now,” Bäckström said, nodding toward his colleague.

  “Fine by me,” Stålhammar said. “I could do with going home and getting a shower.”

  “You’re probably going to have to give us a few more minutes, Roland,” Annika Carlsson said with a friendly smile. “We’re going to have to have a word with the prosecutor before you get out of here.”

  “Okay,” Roland Stålhammar said, shrugging.

  One hour later the chief public prosecutor, Tove Karlgren, had decided to remand former detective inspector Roland Stålhammar in custody. Bäckström and Carlsson had persuaded her, and although there had been a fair amount of muttering she had eventually agreed with them. Stålhammar would have had plenty of time to beat Karl Danielsson to death and get rid of the clothes and so on while he was on his way home. He had a lot going against him, and there were still plenty of things to chase up. So he was justifiably suspected of murder, and while the investigating team checked what he had told them and searched his apartment, it was best for all involved if Stålhammar remained behind bars.

  Just before Bäckström left for the day, Peter Niemi telephoned him. The first results from the National Forensics Lab about the bloodstained clothes had just come through on Niemi’s fax.

  “Danielsson’s blood,” Bäckström said, as a statement of fact rather than a question.

  “Yep, no doubt about it,” Niemi said.

  But nothing that didn’t come from Danielsson himself, according to both the lab and Niemi. No fibers, no strands of hair, no fingerprints. There was a possibility that they might find some traces of DNA, but that would take longer to look into.

  Who gives a fuck? Bäckström thought, calling for a taxi.

  21.

  The following day, after lunch on Tuesday, the investigating team held their third meeting, and everyone, including the two forensics experts, was present. Just as the meeting was due to start, the head of the crime unit in Solna, Superintendent Toivonen, walked into the room. He nodded to the others with a grim glare before sitting down at the back of the room.

  Nine people, one of whom is a proper police officer, Bäckström thought. Apart from him, one purebred bastard Finn, one idiot Lapp—practically a bastard Finn—one Chilean, one Russian, one pretty little darkie, one attack dyke, one retarded folk dancer, and dear old Lars Woodentop Alm, seriously mentally handicapped from birth. Where the fuck is this force heading? he thought.

  “Okay,” Bäckström said. “Let’s get going. How’s the search of Stålhammar’s flat going?” Bäckström nodded encouragingly to Niemi.

  It was almost finished, according to Niemi. To make a long story short, they hadn’t found anything that incriminated Stålhammar. No unexplained amounts of cash, no trousers with traces of blood on them, no briefcase showing any trace of an upholstery hammer.

  He must have hidden everything and made sure to clean up after him. He’s probably buried the dough under a rock, Bäckström thought. Just what you’d expect from an idiot like him.

  “What little we have been able to find actually seems to back up Roly’s own version,” Niemi said.

  “Like what?” Bäckström asked. Who’d have thought it? So now we’re calling our suspect Roly, are we? he thought.

  In the bedroom they had found evidence from Stålhammar’s trip to Malmö and Copenhagen on the bed. A half-unpacked sports bag containing clothes, clean and dirty all jumbled together; a shaving kit; and a half-empty bottle of Gammel Dansk. All the usual things that someone like Stålhammar might be expected to bring home after a short trip to Malmö and Copenhagen.

  “Plus a bundle of receipts,” Niemi said. “Return train tickets to Malmö, then return tickets to Copenhagen. Receipts from five bars in Malmö and Copenhagen. A dozen or so taxi receipts, along with several others. In total they come to about nine thousand Swedish kronor. The times he gave us all match the evidence pretty well.”

  “All of which he collected to give to his good friend Karl Danielsson the receipt trader. As soon as he got home,” Bäckström said with a grin. How fucking stupid can anyone be? he thought.

  “According to what he says,” Alm interjected. “I’ve spoken to him about it, and that’s what he claims. But I can see what you’re thinking, Bäckström.”

  “So what did you do after that?” Bäckström said with a smile.

  “I spoke to the woman down in Malmö who he was with. Telephone interview,” Alm said. “I asked her the same thing. She said spontaneously that she had also noticed and had asked him about it when they were in Copenhagen. Why was Stålhammar suddenly hoarding a load of old receipts? He told her he had an old friend at home in Stockholm that he gives them to.”

  “Who’d have thought it?” Bäckström said, smiling happily. “Roly-Stoly starts making a fuss about collecting receipts, whereupon his little girlfriend wonders what he wants them for. Because presumably he wasn’t saving them for his fo
rmer employers.”

  “Like I said,” Alm said, “I can see what you’re thinking.”

  “Have you got anything else?” Bäckström asked. Before I roll up my sleeves and beat the shit out of Roly Stålhammar, he thought.

  “That business with the timings. Those fifty minutes when he says he was sitting at home thinking before he called Marja Olsson down in Malmö. He definitely made the call. At twenty-five minutes past eleven in the evening he called on his landline to Marja Olsson’s landline.”

  “Leaving forty-five minutes in which to think lofty thoughts,” Bäckström concluded. “What have you come up with for them, then?”

  “To start with I did a test walk from number one Hasselstigen, via the trash bin on Ekensbergsgatan where the clothes were found, home to Stålhammar’s flat on Järnvägsgatan. It takes at least a quarter of an hour unless you want to jog.”

  “Leaving thirty minutes,” Bäckström said. “More than enough to smash Danielsson’s skull in. Steal his money and change into clean clothes. Chucking the raincoat, slippers, and washing-up gloves on the way home.”

  “True enough,” Alm agreed. “The problem is his neighbor. If he’s telling the truth, then it doesn’t fit,” he said.

  I knew it, Bäckström thought. The group effort to get legendary old Roly off the hook at any cost was evidently well under way.

  The neighbor’s name was Paul Englund, seventy-three. A retired caretaker at the Naval History Museum in Stockholm, and the same man who had threatened to call the police about Bäckström and Stigson. Englund had one son, who worked as a photographer at the Expressen newspaper, and the previous evening he had called his dad and told him his next-door neighbor was being held on suspicion of murder. He didn’t suppose that the neighbor in question had just happened to leave a spare key with his dad, so that the son could take some nice pictures of the murderer’s pad?

  Mr. Englund had dashed his son’s hopes. He didn’t have a key. Stålhammar was a noisy alcoholic and the worst sort of neighbor. He was delighted with every minute he didn’t have to share the same building with him, and early the following morning he had called the Solna Police to share his observations of Stålhammar on the evening of Danielsson’s murder. Now that he finally had the chance to get rid of him for good. If he had realized the consequences of what he planned to say, it’s quite possible that he would have chosen to stay quiet instead.