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

by Leif Gw Persson

  “How much money do you think we’re talking about, Bäckström? Are we talking millions, or what?” Niemi had asked with an innocent expression.

  “I thought you might be able to tell us,” Bäckström said. Get hold of some bastard who can count and just give me a receipt for the bastard box. I have to get out of here, Bäckström thought. I have to get out of this building. I need a stiff drink.

  Two hours later he was sitting in the bar on his block with his second stiff drink and his second pint of beer. It hadn’t helped, at least not yet, and it hadn’t got any better when Niemi called him with the news.

  “Two million, nine hundred thousand kronor,” Niemi said. “Twenty-nine bundles, each worth a hundred thousand, and that was all,” Niemi said, sounding as disinterested as if he were reading from a report in front of him. “No prints, and no other evidence either, but he must have been careful and worn gloves when he was touching the money. Anyway, congratulations.”

  “What?” Bäckström said. Now the bastard Lapp’s just making fun of me, he thought.

  “On finding all that money. Maybe Danielsson wasn’t just your ordinary pisshead after all,” Niemi concluded. “Was there anything else I can help you with?”

  “Hello? Hello? I can hardly hear you,” Bäckström said, switching off his phone and ordering another drink.

  “A large one,” Bäckström said.

  “Vojne, vojne, Bäckström,” his Finnish bartender said, smiling and nodding maternally.

  28.

  Another meeting of the investigating team. Arranged at short notice for eight o’clock that morning. Toivonen wanted to be updated about the new state of affairs. Bäckström had been forced to get up in the middle of the night to get there in time. Taxi, crashing headache, stopping en route to take on more fluids and get another pack of cough drops, two more headache pills, and almost a week since Danielsson had been murdered. By now he could have been sitting on the beach at Copacabana with a single malt in one hand and a nice local lass on each knee, Bäckström thought. If it hadn’t been for that dyke.

  When he was sitting in the taxi the public prosecutor had called and told him that unless some “new, compelling evidence regarding Roland Stålhammar” emerged during the course of the meeting, she was intending to release him after lunch.

  “I hear what you’re saying,” Bäckström said. “The only thing bothering me is that he might have a decent amount of money for his travels when he gets out.”

  “People like Stålhammar don’t usually manage to keep themselves hidden,” the prosecutor retorted. “If they go to Thailand, and that’s where they usually go, they usually end up coming home of their own accord after a month or so.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Bäckström said. “I don’t socialize with people like Stålhammar. But if you say so. Was there anything else?” he asked.

  “I think that was everything. By the way, I think you and your colleagues have done a good job so far,” the prosecutor said comfortingly.

  And what would you know about police work, you tight-snatched little bitch? Bäckström thought, switching off his cell.

  At eight o’clock precisely Toivonen had walked into the room, and in contrast to the last time he appeared to be in an excellent mood.

  “How’s things, Bäckström?” Toivonen said, slapping him on the shoulder. “You look like you’re raring to go; hope you had a good night.”

  Fucking fox, Bäckström thought.

  “Perhaps you’d like to start, Nadja?” Bäckström said, nodding in her direction. Not only had he lost almost three million, but the Russian had won a bottle of vodka off him, and how the hell am I going to get out of that one? Bäckström thought.

  Nadja Högberg had spoken to the two women who had set up the Writer’s Cottage Ltd. twenty years ago. One of the first things they had done had been to set up a safe-deposit box for the company on Valhallavägen in Stockholm.

  “They both worked in an advertising agency nearby,” Nadja explained, “so it was a practical solution. The whole thing was only ever supposed to provide them with a bit of extra money.”

  Which was an idea that hadn’t turned out very well. There hadn’t been enough customers right from the start, and when their boss at the advertising agency discovered what they were doing, he had objected. Either they resigned from the agency or they gave up the company.

  By that point the capital they had got from shares, fifty thousand kronor, was more or less exhausted. They had spoken to the man who looked after their accounting, Karl Danielsson, and asked for his help. Danielsson had done so, selling their business to one of his other clients for one krona. Someone that they had never met, and whose name they didn’t even know. Danielsson had prepared all the paperwork. They had met him in his office and signed everything. They had waived the single-krona fee. And that was that.

  “But apparently he did offer,” Nadja said. “He took out one krona and put it on the desk.”

  “A nice gesture,” Bäckström said. “Anything else, Nadja?”

  “Quite a lot more,” Nadja said. “Putting aside the two-point-nine million in his safe-deposit box, I think we’ve got hold of completely the wrong end of the stick as far as our victim is concerned,” she said in the colloquial language that she sometimes fell into.

  “What do you mean, putting aside?” Bäckström said. Two-point-nine million and I could have been in Rio by now, he thought.

  “In his other company, Karl Danielsson Holdings Ltd., there seems to be considerably more than that,” Nadja Högberg said.

  “The pisshead had even more dough? How much more?” Bäckström said suspiciously.

  “I was going to come back to that,” Nadja said. “First I thought I’d say something about how much he might have got out from the safe-deposit box on the day he was murdered.

  “The box is the smallest model, thirty-six centimeters long, twenty-seven centimeters across, and about eight centimeters deep. Space for seven thousand, seven hundred, and seventy-six cubic centimeters, or almost eight liters,” she went on. “If you imagine filling it with thousand-kronor notes in bundles of a hundred thousand, it’s got room for roughly eight million.”

  “Eight million, the little foxy bastard,” Bäckström said. Fuck, that’s criminal, he thought.

  “If it had been euros, in the largest denomination of five hundred euros—and they’re considerably smaller than our thousand-kronor notes, even though they’re worth almost five times as much—there’d be space for something like fifty million,” Nadja said with a wry smile. “And if it had been dollars in the highest denomination, five thousand dollars, you know, the one with President Madison on the front—I think they’re called Madisons—then there would have been almost half a billion Swedish kronor in Danielsson’s safe-deposit box,” Nadja said with a broad smile.

  “You’re pulling our leg, Nadja,” Alm said, shaking his head. “What about all those bags our bank robbers haul away with them? How do you explain those?”

  “Danielsson must have been the richest pisshead in the world,” Bäckström said. He must have been, surely? he thought.

  “Low-denomination notes,” Nadja said. “Probably hundreds, on average. If you fill our box with hundred-kronor notes, you might get a million in there. If you fill it with twenties, there’s hardly room for three hundred thousand.”

  “So the bastard could have had half a billion in his fucking safe-deposit box?” Bäckström said, completely fascinated in spite of himself.

  “I don’t imagine so for a second,” Nadja said, shaking her head. “I think he had at most eight million in there. To answer your question, Bäckström, I don’t think he was the richest pisshead in the world. But on the other hand, I do know that many of the world’s richest men are pissheads.”

  “Which means that he could have taken out five million or so last week,” Annika Carlsson said. Back to his flat, she thought. In a case that he placed in his living room, on top of the television.

>   “If we’re talking about a briefcase or attaché case of the most common sort, and—from the descriptions I’ve seen—that’s what we’re dealing with here, then it wouldn’t have room for five million in thousand-kronor notes,” Nadja said. “All these calculations are based on assumptions, of course,” she said. “But I’ve come up with the following calculations, if you want to hear them.”

  “I’m happy to hear them,” Toivonen said with a contented smile.

  “Well, to start with, I’m assuming he was there to take out some money,” Nadja said. “Obviously he might have removed something else, written notes or something, but I’ve assumed he was taking out money.

  “Then I’m assuming that we’re dealing with thousand-kronor notes, in bundles of a hundred thousand, the same as we actually found in the box. And I’m assuming that he put them in a case matching the most common sort of attaché case.”

  “So how much does it come to?” Toivonen said, for some reason grinning at Bäckström.

  “Three million maximum,” Nadja said. “But even then you’d have to pack them very carefully, so I think it was less than that. Maybe a couple million,” she said with a shrug. “But all this is pure speculation, you understand.”

  “Has anyone checked if Niemi’s bought a new car?” Stigson said, grinning at the others.

  “Careful, lad,” Toivonen said, glaring at him. “You mentioned his business, Nadja. How much money did he have in there, then?”

  “According to the annual accounts, it has a taxable capital sum of about twenty million,” Nadja said. “It’s worth remembering that this is a limited company with the smallest permitted amount of share capital, a hundred thousand kronor. With Danielsson as its managing director, chairman of the board, and sole owner. The other board member is his old friend Mario Grimaldi, and the co-opted member, Roland Stålhammar.”

  “Who’d have thought it?” Toivonen said with a crooked smile. “So how much is just hot air?” he went on.

  “I’ve found ten million,” Nadja said. “Shares, bonds, other valuable documents in the company’s boxes with the SE Bank and Carnegie. The other ten million are supposed to be in foreign accounts, but because I haven’t got the paperwork I need from the prosecutor in order to be able to ask them, I don’t know. I’d guess that the money’s actually there. These annual accounts seem to have been compiled with scrupulous regard to the letter of the law. No, the real problem is something else.”

  “What’s that, then?” Toivonen asked.

  “His accounting. We haven’t got his accounting records. He’s obliged to keep them for ten years, but we haven’t been able to find any documentation at all,” Nadja concluded with a shrug.

  “This almost sounds like something we should hand over to the Financial Crime Unit,” Toivonen said.

  “That’s what I think too,” Nadja said. “If you want me to have time to do anything else, we’re going to have to.”

  “Okay, that’s what we’ll do. Write me a summary and I’ll get it sorted at once,” Toivonen said. “One more question: When did Danielsson start making all this money?”

  “In the last six or seven years,” Nadja said. “Before that his company wasn’t much to boast about. But six, seven years ago things started to go better and better. It earned a couple million each year on various investments, shares, bonds, options, and other sources, and with interest and the interest on the interest his assets have at least kept up with the rise of the stock market.”

  “Interesting,” Toivonen said, getting up. “It looks like Danielsson wasn’t just your average pisshead,” he said. For some reason he smiled and nodded toward Bäckström.

  29.

  “Have we got anything else?” Bäckström asked, glaring at the space left by Toivonen as he went.

  “There’s the stuff you asked me to look into, boss,” Felicia Pettersson said, holding her hand up politely. “The idea that there was something odd about that paperboy. The one who found the body, Septimus Akofeli. I think I’ve worked out what it is. The odd thing, I mean. I went through his phone list, and I uncovered quite a bit that contradicts what he told us when we interviewed him.”

  Who’d have thought it? Bäckström thought. So the pretty little darkie had come out of her shell. Even if she was still wet behind the ears.

  “What was it, then?” said Bäckström, who wanted to go off to the bathroom and drink a few liters of cold water and take a couple more paracetamol and a little mint mouthwash on top. Maybe he could get away from this madhouse and get back home to his cozy abode, where the fridge and cupboards were once again stocked to their old standard.

  “Akofeli had a pay-as-you-go phone,” Felicia Pettersson said. “The sort of cell where no one knows who the subscriber is. On Thursday, May fifteenth, when Danielsson was found, he made ten calls in total. The first one was at six minutes past six in the morning, when he calls the emergency number. That conversation lasted about three minutes—one hundred and ninety-two seconds, to be precise,” she said, nodding toward the sheet of paper in her hand. “Immediately after that, at nine minutes past six, he calls another number, belonging to another pay-as-you-go cell. The call was ended after fifteen seconds, when the voice mail clicked in. Then he called the same number again, and that call is also terminated after fifteen seconds. Then a minute passes before he dials the same number for a third time. That call is ended after five seconds. At eleven minutes past six, to be precise, and that’s what’s interesting.”

  “Why?” Bäckström said, shaking his head. “What is it that makes it so interesting?”

  “That’s when our first patrol entered the building at number one Hasselstigen. I get the impression that when Akofeli heard someone coming, he ended the call and put his cell away.”

  “What about the other calls, then?” Bäckström said, making an effort to look as sharp as anyone could with the hangover he had.

  “At nine o’clock or so he called his work to say that he was going to be late,” Pettersson said, for some reason looking at Annika Carlsson.

  “He asked me for permission before he called,” Carlsson confirmed with a nod.

  “The next call was also to his work. He made the call just before he left Hasselstigen.”

  First one call to the police, then three to some damn pay-as-you-go cell, then two to work. One plus three plus two makes … Yes, what the hell does it make? thought Bäckström, who had already lost the thread.

  “The seventh call was made just after lunch,” Felicia Pettersson went on. “At twelve thirty-one, to be precise. He calls a business that is a client of the courier service he works for. He’s supposed to be picking up a package but has the wrong door code.”

  “How do you know that?” Bäckström asked.

  “Because the customer has gone to lunch. He doesn’t answer. So he then makes his eighth call to the courier company to see if they can find the right door code.”

  “You’ve spoken to them?” Bäckström said. “Why did you do that? Was that sensible?” Young shits, he thought.

  “I think so,” Felicia said with a nod. “But I’ll get to that.”

  What the hell is the pretty little thing saying? Bäckström wondered. We’re going to have to have a little chat about respect and authority, he thought.

  “He makes the ninth call after he finished work, at seven or so that evening, and the tenth and final call is made four hours later. At quarter past eleven that evening. Both calls are to the same pay-as-you-go cell that he tried to call that morning. He gets no answer, and both calls are terminated after seven seconds, which has to mean that the owner had switched the phone off. So out of a total of ten calls he made that day, five of them were to the same pay-as-you-go number, and we have no idea who owns that phone.”

  “It doesn’t necessarily have to mean anything except that he was calling a friend to tell them what had been happening to him,” Bäckström said, sounding as cross as he felt. “Don’t all people like that have pay-as-you-go
phones? That’s the whole point, isn’t it? That you can’t be traced?”

  “Yes, I know. I’ve got a pay-as-you-go phone myself. It’s actually quite practical,” she said, looking at Bäckström without seeming the slightest bit bothered.

  “Okay,” Bäckström said, trying to make his voice softer, since Annika Carlsson’s eyes had already narrowed considerably. “I’m sorry, Felicia, but I still don’t understand what’s so odd about any of this.”

  “It’s because he’s disappeared,” Felicia Pettersson said. “Septimus Akofeli has disappeared.”

  “Disappeared,” Bäckström said. What’s she saying? he thought.

  “Disappeared,” Felicia went on, nodding. “He’s probably been missing since Friday. That morning he delivered the papers as usual, but he never showed up at the courier firm where he works during the day. It’s the first time this has happened, and he’s actually worked there for over a year. His cell is also completely dead as of Friday. Switched off. The last call from his cell is the one he made at quarter past eleven on Thursday evening, to the pay-as-you-go number with the unknown owner, and since then it’s been switched off.”

  “I’m listening,” Bäckström said, nodding encouragingly. So sooty pinched the briefcase, he was thinking.

  “They tried calling him from work several times on Friday,” Felicia went on. “When he didn’t come to work on Monday, one of his colleagues goes round to his home and rings on the door. He lives out in Rinkeby, at seventeen Fornbyvägen, but there was no answer. So he went back outside and looked through the window. He lives in a one-room flat on the ground floor, and the curtains weren’t fully closed. The flat looked empty, according to his workmate. So, if he wasn’t hiding to avoid having to answer the door, he wasn’t home. Later that day the head of the courier firm reported him missing, and because he lives in our police district, this is where the report ended up. I came across it when I was checking him out, and that was when I called his work.