Akofeli had promised to help her, although he had seemed a little stressed. He said he would talk to them himself. Then he had given her a copy of Svenska Dagbladet that he “had in reserve,” without going into any details of how he happened to have it.
“And now it’s all working splendidly,” Mrs. Holmberg concluded.
Mind you, she hadn’t received a paper at all over the weekend, but there was evidently something wrong because none of her neighbors had received theirs either, but things had been fine for the past few days. The only criticism she had would perhaps be that the new paperboy usually turned up half an hour later than the one she had spoken to.
“He seemed nice,” Mrs. Holmberg said, shaking her head. “That dark-skinned boy, I mean. A bit stressed, like I said, but who wouldn’t be with a job like that, and he was so kind and accommodating. I can’t imagine that he would have hurt Danielsson,” she added.
“What makes you say that, Mrs. Holmberg?” Stigson asked. “That he might have hurt your neighbor, I mean.” She doesn’t know that Akofeli has been murdered, he thought.
“Well, why else would you be looking for him? Any child could work that out,” Mrs. Holmberg said in a friendly tone, patting him on the arm.
The other exception was Seppo Laurén, twenty-nine.
“He’s the one who delivers the papers. He supports Hammarby,” Seppo said, handing back the photograph of Akofeli to Sergeant Stigson.
“How do you know that?” Stigson asked. Poor bastard, he thought. Completely retarded, even though he looks entirely normal.
“I had my AIK shirt on,” Seppo said.
“You had your AIK shirt on?”
“I was playing a computer game. A football game. So I had my shirt on.”
“So how did you meet the paperboy?” Stigson said.
“I was going down to the petrol station to get something to eat. They’re open all night.”
“And you bumped into the paperboy?”
“Yes, but I don’t get a paper. I don’t read papers.”
“Did you bump into him inside the building?”
“Yes,” Seppo said with a nod. “My neighbor gets a paper.”
“How do you know he supported Hammarby?” Stigson asked.
“He asked if I supported AIK. He saw my shirt.”
“And so you said that you did. That you support AIK, I mean.”
“I asked him who he supported.”
“And what did he say?”
“That he supported Hammarby,” Seppo said, looking at Stigson in surprise. “I told you that was what he said. Hammarby.”
“Is that the only time you spoke to him?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember when it was?”
“No,” Seppo said, shaking his head. “But there wasn’t any snow. Not winter.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“I would have been wearing a jacket. You can’t go out in winter in just a soccer shirt, can you?”
“No, of course not,” Stigson said. “Of course you wouldn’t.”
“No, because then you’d catch a cold,” Seppo concluded.
“But you don’t remember more precisely? When it was, I mean? When you spoke to him?”
“Must have been fairly recent, because Mom’s in the hospital. When she was home I wasn’t allowed to play computer games so much. And there was always food in the house.”
“I see,” Stigson said. “What did you think of him, then? The paperboy?”
“He was kind,” Seppo said.
The last person in the building that they spoke to was Mrs. Andersson. Annika Carlsson had provided Stigson with a chaperone, and Felicia Pettersson had gone a step further and said before they knocked on the door that this time she would be asking the questions.
Mrs. Andersson didn’t recognize Akofeli. Had never seen him before, which probably wasn’t unexpected, since she usually got up late.
“The earliest I ever get up is eight,” Britt-Marie Andersson said with a smile. “I usually have a cup of coffee and read the paper quietly for a while, then I take Little Sweetie out for a morning walk.
“What’s happened here is so awful,” she said. “You start to wonder what’s going on, and if you actually dare to carry on living here.”
She regarded the idea that her neighbor Karl Danielsson might have had any “dealings” with Akofeli the paperboy as “out of the question.”
“Not that I knew Danielsson particularly well, I certainly wouldn’t say that—the little we did have to do with each other was more than enough—but the idea that he might have had any dealings with that young man who seems to have been murdered is completely out of the question.”
“What makes you say that, Mrs. Andersson?” Felicia Pettersson asked.
“Well, because Danielsson was a racist,” Mrs. Andersson said. “You didn’t even have to know him particularly well to appreciate that.”
Nothing more to add, and she didn’t get a hug this time. Felicia Pettersson gave her colleague Stigson a warning glance as their witness held out her hand to him and leaned forward slightly with a big white smile and a heaving bosom.
“Well, thank you so much for all your help, Mrs. Andersson,” Stigson said, shaking her by the hand. “Thanks again.”
Good boy, Felicia thought, as they left.
43.
While the majority of his colleagues were going door-to-door, Detective Inspector Alm was sitting in his office, worrying about all the red herrings that had suddenly popped up in a murder case. Deep in thought, and behind a closed door for safety’s sake.
Unusually, he had taken out a pen and paper and had started sketching out a number of hypothetical chains of events, all of them based on the idea that Danielsson’s childhood friends were the perpetrators. One, two, or more of them, although he deeply and fundamentally despised such novelties as profiling and motive analysis.
The results of his interviews with Söderman and Grimaldi were deeply unsatisfactory. The former had simply refused to answer his questions, and the latter couldn’t remember what he was doing. Based on a medical condition that in practical terms couldn’t be corroborated. At least not by Alm.
He had spoke to one of his older colleagues who knew Grimaldi and had received a broad smile and a wink in response.
“I saw him a couple weeks ago when I took my wife to that new pizza place up in Frösunda, the one everyone says belongs to him even though he’s not on any of the official papers. It didn’t look like there was anything wrong with his appetite, if you know what I mean.”
“What do you mean?” Alm asked.
“Well, he was sat there holding hands with a blonde, and if I say she was half his age I wouldn’t be exaggerating much.”
We who built Sweden, Alm thought. Wasn’t that what those old boys who threatened to bomb the government called themselves? If you could do that, presumably you could beat to death an old friend no matter what the crime statistics have to say about it, he thought.
What complicated the equation was the murder of Akofeli, hence the need for paper and pen.
One of Danielsson’s old friends beats him to death. Takes the case with all the money. Even Roly Stålhammar couldn’t be ruled out of this, with his shaky alibi. It all hung on a witness who hated him and who would doubtless have sworn the exact opposite if he knew the way things really were. Anything in his eagerness to get rid of a noisy neighbor.
Nor could they rule out the possibility that there had been more than one perpetrator. That Kalle Danielsson had acted as a black-market banker for Grimaldi, for instance. That he hadn’t played it straight. That Grimaldi and his pal Halfy Söderman had paid a home visit, beaten him to death, and taken the briefcase containing all the money.
If only it weren’t for Akofeli.
Akofeli finds Danielsson murdered. His old friends, who beat him to death, missed the briefcase with the money. They work it out, go back, discover that Akofeli took the case, go round to h
is, kill him, dump the body in Ulvsundasjön.
Are you kidding? Alm thought, aiming the remark at himself. Then he drew a thick black line through this latest hypothesis.
Akofeli kills Danielsson and takes the case with the money. Danielsson’s old friends find this out, go round to Akofeli’s, kill him, reclaim the case, and dump the body.
Why? Alm thought. Why would Akofeli kill Danielsson? And how the hell would his old friends find out that it was Akofeli who killed him?
The plot thickens, Alm thought, with a deep sigh, drawing another thick black line over the paper.
Then he had gone home to his beloved wife. Lamb chops with garlic butter, salad, and baked potatoes. Since it was almost the weekend, or Thursday at least, they had celebrated quietly by sharing a bottle of wine.
44.
While his simpler foot soldiers had doubtless been running round like headless chickens in Hasselstigen and out in Rinkeby, Bäckström had spent his time on slightly more demanding mental activities together with his only colleague worthy of the title, Nadja Högberg, doctor of mathematics and physics. Like him, she was also a connoisseur of fine vodka. A worthy conversational partner in a world where he was otherwise surrounded by nothing but idiots, and this was in spite of the fact that she was a woman, Bäckström thought.
When Bäckström returned to the police station after a nutritious and well-balanced meal, Nadja had knocked on his door and asked if she could come in to go through the contents of Danielsson’s pocket diary. She had the original in a plastic evidence bag, but to save time she had given him a computer printout containing all the notes in his diary, arranged in date order.
“His notes are both concise and cryptic,” Nadja summarized. “During the period from January first this year to May fourteenth, a total of nineteen and a half weeks, he made a total of one hundred and thirty-one different entries. Less than one a day on average.”
“I’m listening,” Bäckström said, putting down the sheets she had given him, folding his hands on his stomach, and leaning back in his chair. She’s got a smart head on her shoulders, this woman, he thought.
“The first note appears on the first day of the year, New Year’s Day, Tuesday, January first, and it reads, and I quote: ‘gentleman’s dinner with the boys, Mario,’ end quotes. An early dinner, it looks like, since the diary indicates that it was supposed to start at two o’clock in the afternoon.”
“Perhaps they didn’t want to take any chances.” Bäckström grinned.
“That must be why. They were sharp,” Nadja agreed. “The penultimate note is from the same day he died, Wednesday, May fourteenth. ‘14.30, Bank.’ And that’s also the only note during the whole period where he mentions going to the bank.”
“Considering the size of his withdrawals, presumably he had no need to keep going every day,” Bäckström said.
“The most common entry,” Nadja went on, “appears thirty-seven times. Practically every Wednesday and Sunday between January and May he wrote ‘Solvalla’ or ‘Valla’ or ‘Races.’ I’m guessing that they all refer to the same thing, going to Solvalla racecourse to gamble, and he went practically every time there was any racing there. The last note in the diary is also from the day he died: ‘17.00, Valla.’ He hadn’t made any entries for the coming days, weeks, or months. Seems to live day to day.”
“No other racecourses apart from Solvalla?” That fits in well with what we already know, Bäckström thought.
“Not that he’s made a note of, anyway,” Nadja said, shaking her head.
“Now, who the hell would bother going all the way to Jägersro just to collect a few betting slips?” Bäckström said.
“Sixty-four notes of a miscellaneous nature. One visit to the bank, like I said, two doctor’s appointments, and a couple similar entries, then the rest are almost exclusively the names of his old friends. Roly, Gunnar, Jonte, Mario, Halfy, and so on. One, two, or more of them at a time. Several times a week.”
“A comprehensive social life.” Bäckström laughed. “Anything of interest to us, then?”
“Anything of interest to us, then?” he repeated.
“I think so,” Nadja said. “Thirty entries in total.”
Now she’s got that look again, Bäckström thought. This Russian’s as sharp as a fucking razor blade, he thought.
“I’m still listening.”
“Five of them recur at the end of each month. The days vary a bit, but it’s always the last week of the month, and it’s the same entry each time: ‘R ten thousand.’ ”
“What’s your interpretation?”
“That someone with a first or last name starting with R receives ten thousand each month from Danielsson.”
“A lover,” Bäckström said, suddenly remembering the condoms and Viagra they had found in his flat. But remember, some of us get to fuck without paying, he thought self-consciously, even though it was far from true.
“That’s what I think too,” Nadja said with a smile. “With that in mind, I think R is the first letter of her first name.”
“But you have no idea who she might be?” Bäckström said.
“I’m working on it. Only just started,” Nadja said, smiling.
“Okay,” Bäckström said, grinning happily. So I daresay I’ll have the woman’s name later today, he thought.
“Then there’s an entry from Friday, April fourth: ‘SL twenty thousand.’ ”
“SL,” Bäckström said, shaking his head. “If he was buying monthly tickets from Stockholm Local Transport for twenty thousand, he’d have had enough for all his friends and neighbors as well.”
“Someone with the initials SL received twenty thousand on Friday, February eighth. I’m working on that too,” Nadja said.
Good to hear that someone’s doing some work, Bäckström thought. He himself had been struggling under a completely unreasonable amount of work for almost a fortnight now.
“But it’s after that that it gets really interesting,” Nadja said. “Really interesting, if you ask me, Bäckström.”
Really interesting?
“Roughly once a week, four to six times each month, in total twenty-four times throughout this period, three acronyms recur: HA, AFS, and FI, always capital letters. They occur with more or less the same regularity and are always followed by a number. Each acronym is always followed by the same number: ‘HA five,’ ‘AFS twenty,’ ‘FI fifty.’ The pattern repeats, with just one exception. On one occasion the acronym FI is followed by the number one hundred, then a B and an exclamation mark: ‘FI one hundred B!’ ”
“What’s your interpretation?” Bäckström said, sitting and looking at the printout he had been given for simplicity’s sake, scratching his round head with his right hand.
“I think HA, AFS, and FI are people’s initials,” Nadja said. “And I think the numbers five, ten, twenty, fifty, and one hundred refer to the amount of money being paid out. A sort of basic code, in other words.”
“Well, he seems to have got off fairly cheaply, dear old Danielsson,” Bäckström said, and grinned. Even I could live with a fiver, or a twenty- or fifty-kronor note, Bäckström thought. Maybe even a hundred, as long as it didn’t become a habit, of course. But it didn’t look as though it had. Just the once.
“I don’t think so,” Nadja said, shaking her head. “I think they’re multiples,” Nadja said.
“Multiples?” Bäckström said. Nazdorovje? Nyet? Da? What the hell does she mean? he thought.
“That the initials FI, who gets fifty, gets ten times as much as the initials HA, who gets five. Apart from the one occasion when he gets one hundred—in other words, twenty times as much.”
“Exactly,” Bäckström said. “Obviously,” he said. “And this character AFS, who gets twenty each time, gets four times as much as HA, but only half of what FI gets …”
“Forty percent as much, except for the time when FI gets a hundred,” Nadja corrected.
“Exactly, exactly, that’s just what I was a
bout to say. But what about this ‘Bea,’ then? After every one of these payments it always says Bea,” Bäckström said, pointing at the list he had been given. “For instance, ‘FI fifty, Bea,’ or ‘HA five, Bea.’ What do you make of that?”
“I think it’s code for some sort of payment,” Nadja said. “People like Danielsson often used abbreviations like that. For instance pd would mean that you’ve paid. Bea might mean that you have to pay a certain amount: only he would have known.”
“I see,” Bäckström said, stroking his chin and trying to look smarter than he felt. “How much money are we talking about?
“How much money?” he repeated, just to make sure, considering the heavy mathematical calculations they were dealing with here.
“Well, this is all speculation, now, as I’m sure you appreciate,” Nadja said.
“I’m listening,” Bäckström said, putting his printout down and leaning back. Make the most of it, Nadja, he thought. Now that you’re talking to the only person in the entire force who’s smart enough to understand what you’re saying.
“If we assume that Danielsson took out two million kronor on the day he was murdered, and bearing in mind that it was almost six months since he was last down in that bank vault, and if he took out the same amount on that occasion, then I estimate that every month he was paying circa seventeen thousand to HA, almost seventy thousand to AFS and about one hundred and seventy thousand to FI.
“In other words, circa two hundred and fifty thousand each month,” she went on. “Over six months that comes to one and a half million. If we add in the other costs he must have incurred in connection with this activity, plus the hundred and seventy thousand that FI got on the occasion that he received the multiple of a hundred B plus exclamation mark, we end up with about two million. If we’re talking ballpark numbers, of course,” Nadja concluded, with the linguistic flexibility that had become part of her Swedish personality.
Backstrom: He Who Kills the Dragon (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Original) Page 20