“To answer your previous question, boss,” Felicia Pettersson concluded, looking at Bäckström with a perfectly correct expression on her face.
“This isn’t good,” Bäckström said, shaking his head. “We’ll have to try to find … find Akofeli. Can you take it, Annika?”
“Felicia and I can,” Annika Carlsson said with a nod.
“Good,” Bäckström said, getting up with a jerk. “Keep me informed,” he said.
“One more thing,” Bäckström said, stopping in the doorway and letting his gaze sweep over his colleagues before settling on Felicia Pettersson.
“This business of the calls to that pay-as-you-go number, and the fact that he’s gone missing, obviously isn’t good. We’ve got to get to the bottom of this, and it’s good that you came up with it, Felicia. But that still isn’t what’s bothering me,” Bäckström said, shaking his head.
“There’s something else bothering me about Akofeli,” he repeated.
“Like what?” Annika Carlsson asked.
“Don’t know, I’m still working on it,” he said, nodding and smiling in spite of his headache. That gave them something to chew on, he thought, as he stepped out into the corridor, since the only thing that was bothering him right now was the lack of a large—very large—and very cold Czech lager.
He could hardly be bothered with people like that sooty. Anyone with a brain ought to be able to work it out, he thought. All the shit that people like that get up to, and I bet he was the one who took that briefcase. If it wasn’t Niemi or Hernandez, of course. Any snotty-nosed little kid could see it wasn’t Stålhammar. He was probably delighted with the meager amount he’d been able to pinch from the victim’s wallet.
Stålhammar beats Danielsson to death. Takes the contents of his wallet and staggers home to Järnvägsgatan. Misses the briefcase containing millions.
Akofeli finds the body. Takes a snoop around Danielsson’s flat. Finds the briefcase. Hides it somewhere. Opens it later in peace and quiet. Discovers that he’s suddenly become a millionaire. And sets off for Tahiti. Nothing more to it than that. And if it wasn’t him, then it was probably Niemi and his little Chilean friend. Okay, high time to get a bite to eat, he thought.
30.
Green Carriers had their offices on Alströmergatan on Kungsholmen. On the way there Annika Carlsson and Felicia Pettersson had discussed the new state of affairs. Anything else would have been peculiar, and almost a dereliction of duty for a couple of proper police officers.
“So what do we think about all this, Felicia?” Annika Carlsson said.
“I hope I’m wrong,” Felicia said, “but the most likely scenario is unfortunately that Akofeli nicked the briefcase and hid it somewhere nearby before he called the emergency desk. After all, we’ve only got his word for it that he called as soon as he found Danielsson.”
“Yes, I’m afraid that might be what happened. It doesn’t seem unlikely, at any rate.”
“Which probably means that Akofeli is out of the country by now,” Felicia concluded.
“I’ve already spoken to the prosecutor,” Annika Carlsson said. “As soon as we’re done with the couriers we can go on to Akofeli’s flat.”
“We’ll have to arrange to get a set of keys,” Felicia Pettersson said.
“I’ve already spoken to the property management company,” Annika Carlsson said with a smile. “What do you take me for?”
“I take you for the kind of person I like,” Felicia said. “Just teasing, that’s all.”
Green Carriers were on the ground floor, with a sign over the door and half a dozen cycles lined up right across the pavement.
“If you were coming down here with a pushchair, you’d have to step onto the road,” Annika Carlsson said with a frown.
“Cool it, babe,” Felicia Pettersson said in English, flashing her a broad smile. “Maybe deal with that at the end?”
“You can do the talking,” Carlsson said. “This is your lead.”
First they had spoken to Akofeli’s boss, a Jens Johansson—“call me Jensa, everyone who works here does”—who looked like your standard Swedish computer nerd, and who seemed to be considerably older than Akofeli. Most of all he seemed worried. You could see it in his eyes in spite of his thick glasses.
“This isn’t like Mister Seven,” he said. “Septimus, in other words. We call him Seven, since that’s what his name means in Latin,” he explained, at the same time shaking his head to emphasize what he said. “He hasn’t missed a day since he started working here, and that’s eighteen months ago now.”
“What’s he like as a person?” Annika Carlsson asked, in spite of the promise she had made five minutes before.
“Brilliant,” his boss said. “Excellent cyclist, in great shape, always happy to take on a job, even if the roads are like a winter rally circuit out there. Honest, decent, good with customers. Loads of energy. Cares about the environment. That’s important here. We’re big on that. Everyone who works here has to care about the environment.”
“So what do you think has happened?” Felicia Pettersson asked. I’m the one asking the questions here, she thought.
“It must have something to do with that damn murder. Maybe he saw something he shouldn’t have. At worst, someone might have wanted him out of the way. That’s what the talk round here is saying, anyway.”
“Did he seem at all worried when he got here on Thursday?”
“No. He didn’t really want to talk about it. Everyone kept asking him, of course. I mean, how often do you come across a body that’s just been murdered? It’s never happened to me, anyway,” Jensa said, polishing his glasses agitatedly. “Nor to anyone else working here, or anyone I know. And then he just disappears. That’s got to be too much of a coincidence. In terms of the timing, I mean.”
“I hear what you’re saying,” Felicia said. “Who was his best friend here at work?”
“Lawman,” Jensa said. “Nisse Munck. A law student. His dad’s supposed to be some hotshot lawyer. He’s here now, by the way. Sitting down in the basement, polishing his own racing bike. He rides in races. Mind you, he isn’t exactly Girot or Touren, if you ask me,” Jensa said, lowering his voice. “Would you like to talk to him?”
“Please,” Felicia said. “If he can spare the time out of the saddle.”
Lawman was remarkably similar to his boss, complete with glasses and all, and apart from his long, muscular legs, he didn’t look much like a professional racer.
“Of course I asked,” Lawman said. “Criminal law’s my thing. I’m going to set up my own practice doing that as soon as I’ve graduated. Criminal case lawyer, own firm,” Lawman clarified.
“What did he say, then?” Felicia Pettersson asked.
“Said he didn’t want to talk about it,” Lawman said. “I can understand that. Can’t have been nice. I went online and looked as soon as I got home on Thursday—it sounds like a whole chainsaw-massacre thing. Well, they mentioned an ax in the article.”
“But the two of you didn’t talk about what he’d been through?” Annika Carlsson repeated.
“I tried,” Lawman said. “Mister Seven didn’t want to talk. Okay, okay. Work to do. New jobs all the time. And we don’t exactly ride tandems here, you know?”
“That was all?” Annika Carlsson nodded to him.
“Yes, I think so.”
“He didn’t say anything else? Didn’t ask anything?”
“Now that you come to mention it,” Lawman said. “He did have one question. It was just before I went home. It was a bit of a weird question, but everyone here asks me stuff all the time.”
“What, about legal matters?” Felicia said.
“Yes,” Lawman said with a nod. “Never-ending unpaid consultations. Mostly family law. What happens if my girlfriend kicks me out into the street and my name’s not on the lease? What about the fridge we paid for together? That sort of thing. Even though I keep telling them that criminal law’s my thing.”
“
The weird question?” Felicia reminded him.
“He asked about the right of self-defense,” Lawman said. “What it was like in Sweden if someone attacked you and you tried to defend yourself. How far you could go, basically.”
“So what did you say?”
“First I told him it was a fucking weird question. Then I asked if Seven had beaten the old guy to death because he attacked him for giving him the wrong paper or something. Some customers go a bit far sometimes. But that wasn’t it. Seven told me to lay off all that kind of thing. Nothing like that. No way,” Lawman said.
“Do you remember what his exact words were?” Felicia persisted.
“How far you have the right to go. Suppose someone tried to kill you. Did that give you the right to kill them? That was pretty much it.”
“And what did you say in response?” Annika Carlsson repeated.
“Yes. And no. You should know this, shouldn’t you? The right to use the level of force motivated by the danger posed by the attack. Plus the extra force necessary to disarm your opponent. I told him he could forget doing anything else. Like that extra kick just for the hell of it when your attacker’s already on the ground.”
“Did you get the impression that Seven was asking on his own account? That he had ever been the victim of an attack?” Annika Carlsson asked.
“Are you kidding?” Lawman said. “Seven grew up in Somalia. The victim of an attack? Take a look at the Internet. Welcome to planet earth, officer.”
“I mean here in Sweden,” Annika Carlsson clarified. “Had he been the victim of an attack in Sweden?”
“Yes, I asked him that,” Lawman said. “He denied it categorically, as I’ve already said. Apart from all the racists that someone like Seven has to put up with, of course. Send idiots like that back to live in their cozy Nordic caves, if you want to know what I think.”
“Did you get the impression that he was asking on someone else’s behalf?” Felicia Pettersson asked.
“I didn’t ask him that, actually,” Lawman said. “Considering what he’d been through that morning, I suppose it wasn’t really that weird. The fact that I assumed he was talking about himself, I mean. That’s wasn’t weird, was it?”
“No, definitely not,” Felicia said with a smile.
After that they had left. Jensa had followed them onto the street and had thus given Annika Carlsson an unsought opportunity to live up to her reputation in the Solna police station.
“Talking about caring about the environment,” Carlsson said. “What do you think would happen if you tried to get past here on the pavement with a pushchair?”
“Fixed, fixed, I’ll sort it,” Jensa said, raising both hands in a gesture of surrender.
“Good,” Annika Carlsson said. “I’ll expect it to be next time we come by.”
“How do we interpret this, then? That business of his question about self-defense?” Felicia said. “The plot thickens, Detective Inspector. It’s high time to enlighten a younger colleague.”
“The fact that Danielsson died the evening before Akofeli found him is quite clear,” Annika Carlsson said.
“The coroner,” Felicia agreed with a nod.
“Not just that,” Annika Carlsson said. “I was there at seven o’clock, and Niemi and Chico hadn’t arrived by then, so I took the opportunity to touch him.”
“Tut, tut,” Felicia said, smiling broadly. “No looking with your fingers. My lecturer in forensics was always going on about that when I was training.”
“Must have forgotten that,” Annika Carlsson said. “Anyway, I was wearing gloves.”
“And?”
“He was stiff as a board,” Annika Carlsson said. “So I have no quarrel with our medical friends at all. Not this time. We’re in complete agreement.”
“Right, then,” Felicia said. “What do you think about getting a bite to eat before heading out to Rinkeby? There’s a decent sushi bar in the Solna shopping center.”
“Done,” said Annika Carlsson, who was already thinking about something else. What’s this really all about? Annika Carlsson thought. This is just getting more and more peculiar, she thought.
31.
While his colleagues were presumably running around like headless chickens, Bäckström had paid a visit to a discreet restaurant in the center of Solna. He had eaten pork chops with mushrooms in a cream sauce and potato croquettes, washed down with beer. He had even downed a couple quick shots while he kept a close eye on the door. It was far from out of the question that Toivonen and Niemi might try to do some crafty drinking in working hours, and he wasn’t the sort who wanted to be taken by surprise by a couple Finnish bastards.
After a cup of coffee and a little Napoleon cake, and a period of meditation and reflection, he had returned to the police station. Strengthened in both mind and body, he had gone in via the garage and met his good friend, the garage attendant.
“You want to borrow the shack and take the weight off your feet for a while?” his compadre said.
“Well, if it’s free,” Bäckström said.
“Go ahead. The drugs lads were out all night on a job, so they’re at home snoring in their pigsties.”
“Wake me in a couple hours,” Bäckström said. “I’ve been at it pretty much for twenty-four hours now, so it’s high time I had a bit of a rest.”
Two hours later he was sitting in his office. His head clear as glass, his tongue sharp as a razor, and the first one to experience this was their prosecutor, who called to let him know that she had released Roland Stålhammar from custody.
The situation had become more complicated. According to the prosecutor, it didn’t look like Danielsson was just an ordinary pisshead. And that was putting it mildly. She would have been delighted if she had just a tenth of the money he had.
The same thing seemed to go for Stålhammar. He didn’t look like an ordinary pisshead either. He was also a former colleague of Bäckström’s, and given the new facts that had emerged about the victim, it was entirely feasible that the motive and perpetrator were completely unlike those you would expect to see in an ordinary fight between two completely ordinary pissheads.
“Absolutely,” Bäckström said. “I completely agree with you. No matter what we might think about pissheads like Stålhammar, we mustn’t forget that the vast majority of pissheads don’t actually beat anyone to death or even get beaten to death. In fact, the number of pissheads that beat someone to death is pretty much exactly the same as the number of pissheads that get beaten to death.”
“How do you mean?” the prosecutor said suspiciously.
“That Stålhammar isn’t an ordinary pisshead,” Bäckström said. There, that gave her something to chew on, a real Mensa test, he thought, as he hung up.
Then he had taken out a pen and paper and spent the next two hours listing all the main and subsidiary lines of inquiry of his case. He concluded by writing a list of things that his colleagues needed to do. Presumably they had all learned to read by now, Bäckström thought, glancing at the clock. Five o’clock already, and high time he went home, but just as he realized this he was interrupted by a knock on his door.
“Come in,” Bäckström grunted.
“Sorry to disturb you,” Nadja Högberg said. “I know it’s time to go home now, at least that’s what I was thinking, but before you go I wanted to give you this,” she said, handing over a plastic bag that, to judge by its shape, contained a very large bottle. Vodka, and a whole liter at that—Russian, to judge by the label, a brand that he didn’t know and couldn’t read either.
“And to what do I owe this honor?” Bäckström said with a cheerful expression. “Come in and sit down, and shut the door so we don’t start tongues wagging.”
“Our little bet,” Nadja said. “I’ve been feeling guilty about it.”
“I thought I was the one who owed you a bottle. I was actually thinking of stopping off on the way home and getting one for you,” Bäckström lied. “Feeling guilty? What makes you say
that?”
“Even before we made our wager, I was starting to suspect that Danielsson might have a whole lot of money,” Nadja said. “I was busy looking into his business affairs, so that idea of the pot of gold wasn’t exactly plucked from thin air. So I’m the one who owes you a bottle. You don’t owe me anything.”
“A little drink, maybe?” Bäckström said with a nod, looking even happier now. “After a hard day at work full of trials and tribulations.” Fuck, they’re shrewd, these Russians, he thought. The bitch had just sat there, playing it cool, figuring out how to trick me out of the whole bet. Then she gets sentimental. And the next day her conscience gets the better of her and she decides to put things right.
“Well, maybe just a little one,” Nadja said. “It’s the best vodka you can get, by the way, better that Stolichnaya, Kubanskaya, or Moskovskaya. It’s called Standard, and you can’t get it in Sweden. My family usually bring a few bottles when they come to visit.”
“It’ll be interesting to see what it tastes like,” Bäckström the connoisseur said. He had already taken two glasses and a bag of cough drops out of his desk drawer. “There we go, glasses and a little something for after,” he explained, pointing at the throat sweets.
“I’ve got a jar of pickled gherkins in the fridge,” Nadja said, looking dubiously at the bag of mints. “I think I’ll go and get that instead.”
Not just gherkins, it turned out. When she returned she had with her a sourdough loaf, smoked sausage, and cured ham.
Probably because of all those world wars they’ve been through, Bäckström thought. A proper Russian always makes sure they’ve got supplies within reach in case it all kicks off.
Backstrom: He Who Kills the Dragon (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Original) Page 15