Backstrom: He Who Kills the Dragon (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Original)
Page 22
SL and R, first and last names, and first name, respectively, she thought.
First she had pulled out their list of everyone connected to the murders of Karl Danielsson and Septimus Akofeli. Victims, family, friends and acquaintances, workmates, neighbors, witnesses, suspects, and anyone else who just happened to be there. She had checked the first and last names of 316 people and had come up with three matches: Susanna Larsson, eighteen; Sala Lucik, thirty-three; and Seppo Laurén, twenty-nine.
Susanna Larsson worked at Green Carriers with Akofeli. Sala Lucik lived in the flat above Akofeli and was on the door-to-door list, but they hadn’t been able to contact her because she had spent the past fortnight locked up in Solna, suspected of serious drug offenses. Seppo Laurén was Danielsson’s neighbor. The same young man who, according to Bäckström, was “a few sandwiches short of a picnic.”
Easy, Nadja Högberg thought, bringing up Seppo Laurén’s file. His closest relative was Ritwa Laurén, forty-nine, who had spent the last two months in the hospital after a stroke. Father unknown, Nadja read.
Could it really be that easy? Nadja Högberg thought.
Probably, she thought, as she brought up Ritwa Laurén’s passport photograph on her screen five minutes later. She had been forty-two when the photograph was taken. Blond, beautiful, a shy smile in half-profile, didn’t look a day over thirty-five when she had the picture taken seven years after that for her new passport.
She had lived in the same apartment on Hasselstigen for almost twenty-nine years. She had moved in with her three-month-old son before she was twenty. By then her twenty-years-older neighbor Karl Danielsson had already lived there for five years. Never trust coincidence, Nadja Högberg thought.
Almost four months ago, on Friday, February 8, “SL” had received twenty thousand kronor from Karl Danielsson. The day before, Thursday, February 7, Seppo Laurén’s mother, Ritwa, had been found unconscious in the toilet at work, and had been taken to A&E at the Karolinska Hospital, and within two hours was being operated on in the hospital’s neurosurgical department. One month later she had been transferred to a rehabilitation center. No longer unconscious, but not really much more than that.
Five minutes later Nadja Högberg was digging through the pile of receipts that forensics had found in Danielsson’s flat. One of them was a receipt for a computer and various accessories and programs, as well as six different computer games, in total 19,875 kronor. They had all been bought from a computer store in the Solna shopping center, paid for in cash on February 8.
Father unknown, Nadja Högberg thought. Men are pigs, she thought. Some men, at least, Dr. Nadjesta Ivanova corrected herself, and this time it had only taken her an hour to find one of them.
She had spent the rest of the day on other matters. Mainly looking for a good place for someone to hide ten years’ worth of accounting files. No safe-deposit box this time, Nadja thought, since there ought to be several boxes worth of documents. He had hired storage space somewhere. Not too close, but not too far away either. Danielsson seemed to be both a practical and a lazy man, the sort who organized things to make life easy for himself. Taxi distance, she thought, and started typing at her computer.
Just before five o’clock Annika Carlsson and Lars Alm had burst into her office, breathless. New and previously unknown information had emerged over the course of the afternoon from an interview with Seppo Laurén. Troubling information.
“I’m listening,” Nadja Högberg said, leaning back and folding her hands over her little round stomach. I wonder where the hell he is? she thought, since she hadn’t seen any sign of Bäckström since that morning.
“He admits that he had previously hit Danielsson. Evidently because he thought Danielsson was responsible for his mother ending up in the hospital. His relationship with Danielsson was also very different to what we previously thought. We can forget the idea that he just used to run little errands for Danielsson. Apparently Danielsson used to pay the rent on their apartment and gave the kid money for food. And much more besides. This reeks of revenge, if you ask me,” Alm concluded.
“And he gave him a computer that must have cost a fair few thousand,” Carlsson added.
“Perhaps that isn’t so surprising when you consider that he was Seppo’s dad,” Nadja said.
“Sorry?” Annika Carlsson said.
“What the hell are you saying?” Alm said.
“I suggest we do the following,” Nadja said, raising her hands to stop them. “Annika, you go and get a sample from Seppo, and we’ll soon get this business of paternity sorted out. After all, we’ve got Danielsson’s DNA already. Laurén’s will probably take the usual fortnight before the National Forensics Lab get back to us, but I promise to explain how it all fits together as soon as the sample’s done.
“Then you and Lars can go to his apartment and pick up the hard drive from his computer,” she went on.
“What do you want that for?” Alm asked, looking at her curiously.
“If I remember correctly, he said in one of your interviews with him that he spent all evening and all night playing computer games,” Nadja Högberg said. Idiots, suddenly I’m leading a murder investigation even though I’m only an ordinary civilian employee, she thought.
One and a half hours later it was done. First Nadja had told them what she’d found out from her computer about Karl Danielsson and Ritwa and Seppo Laurén. Once she was finished Alm and Carlsson had exchanged a look, then they looked at Nadja and finally they nodded to her. Reluctantly.
“But why did he deny being the father for all those years?” Annika Carlsson wondered.
“To avoid having to pay child care,” Nadja said. “That way Karl Danielsson saved himself several hundred thousand kronor.”
“But why didn’t he even tell his own son? It’s quite clear that Seppo hasn’t got a clue that Danielsson is his dad,” Alm said.
“Maybe he was ashamed of him. He probably wasn’t good enough for a man like Karl Danielsson,” Nadja concluded. Some men are pigs, she thought.
Then all three of them had gone to Alm’s office. And there sat Seppo Laurén, entertaining himself with Felicia Pettersson, drinking Coca-Cola and apparently having a whale of a time.
Nadja had connected his hard drive and together they had worked out what he was doing from the afternoon of Wednesday, May 14, until the morning of Thursday, May 15. Seppo had been sitting at his computer from quarter past six on Wednesday evening until quarter past six on Thursday morning. At three in the morning he had taken a short break of eight minutes. Otherwise he had been playing nonstop for twelve hours in a row.
“I got a bit hungry then,” Seppo said. “I took a break for a sandwich and a glass of milk.”
“What did you do afterward? When you stopped playing on the computer, I mean?” Alm said, evidently refusing to give up even though Nadja had already given him several warning glances.
“I fell asleep,” Seppo said, looking at Alm in surprise. “Why, what would you have done?”
49.
Bäckström had started Friday by going to see his boss, Anna Holt, and asking for reinforcements. Suddenly he had a double murder on his hands, the same strength team as before, and that had been inadequate from the outset.
“I hear what you’re saying, Bäckström,” Holt said, starting to sound more and more like her old boss Lars Martin Johansson. “The problem is that I haven’t got anyone I can give you. Right now we’re on our knees out here.”
“Toivonen’s got thirty men to investigate a robbery with two fatalities. I’ve got five to take care of two murders. You have peculiar priorities in this station,” Bäckström said, smiling amiably. That gave you something to chew on, you scrawny little nightmare, he thought.
“I’m the one who decided the prioritization,” Holt said. “So I’m going to stand by it. If any information comes to light that suggests that the people behind the robbery also killed Danielsson and Akofeli, I’ll be transferring you and your colleagues
to Toivonen’s investigation.”
“I’m not sure that would be wise,” Bäckström said. Not just scrawny, he thought.
“Why not?”
“I find it hard to believe that the Ibrahim brothers would kill the man who helped them hide their money. And I find it even harder to believe that Danielsson tried to rip them off. He may have been a pisshead but he doesn’t seem to have had suicidal tendencies. But do you know what I find hardest of all?”
“No,” Holt said with a reluctant smile. “What?”
“If they did it anyway—killed Danielsson because he tried to steal their money, I mean—then surely they would have thought about all their money that was left in Danielsson’s safe-deposit box?”
“Do you know what, Bäckström? I have a feeling that you may have a point there. Maybe you’ve even got an idea of who did do it, who killed Danielsson and Akofeli?”
“Yes,” Bäckström said. “Just give me another week.”
“Well, that all sounds excellent,” Anna Holt said. “I look forward to hearing more. Now you’ll have to excuse me. I’ve actually got a lot to do.”
Just as well to kill two dykes with one stone, Bäckström thought, and went straight to Annika Carlsson to find out how things were going.
“Not great just now,” Carlsson said, and sighed. “The door-to-door didn’t turn up anything. Forensics are lying low and we haven’t heard anything from the National Lab or forensic medicine. And as for us, we’re short on ideas and leads.”
“Akofeli,” Bäckström said, shaking his round head. “There’s something not quite right there.”
“But I thought Felicia had sorted that?” Annika Carlsson said, looking at him in surprise. “Mainly thanks to you, actually, since you put her on the trail.”
“I wasn’t thinking of his phone calls,” Bäckström said, shaking his head. “There’s something else bothering me.”
“But you don’t know what it is?” Annika Carlsson said.
“No, I don’t,” Bäckström said. “It’s in here somewhere, but I just can’t put my finger on it.”
“And you think it might be important to the case?”
“Important?” Bäckström snorted. “When I work out what it is, we’ll have this case cracked. Danielsson and Akofeli.”
“Fucking hell,” Annika Carlsson said, looking at him, wide-eyed.
Thank you and goodbye, Bäckström thought. How fucking stupid can you get?
“You’ll have to help me, Annika,” Bäckström said, nodding seriously at her. “I have a feeling that you’re the only one who can.”
“I promise,” Annika Carlsson said.
And that gave you something to chew on, while I go off and enjoy the weekend, he thought.
After that Bäckström had followed his usual Friday routine. Switched his phone’s message to “official business.” Turned off his cell phone. Left the police station. Took a taxi to a safe location on Kungsholmen, where he ate a decent lunch. Then a short walk home to his cozy abode, a well-earned siesta, and, as the final part of his routine Friday program, he had visited his new masseuse.
An unusually body-conscious Polish girl, Elena, twenty-six, who had her health care practice close to his home, and who had Bäckström as her last client each Friday. She always ran through the whole program and usually concluded by giving the Bäckström super-salami a little taste of the delights to come over the weekend.
That evening he was going to have dinner with an old acquaintance. A renowned art dealer, Gustaf Gustafsson Henning, to whom Bäckström was pleased to have been of assistance on a number of occasions, and who had asked if he could take Bäckström to dinner.
“How about the main dining room of Operakällaren at half past seven?” Henning had asked.
Well-to-do, silver-haired, tailored, famous from antiques shows on television, and over seventy. Out and about, and in the circles that mattered, he was known by the nickname GeGurra, and he bore not the slightest resemblance to the notorious teenage gangster Juha Valentin Andersson-Snygg, born in 1937, whose records had disappeared from the archive of the Stockholm Police many years ago.
“How about eight o’clock?” Bäckström said, since he preferred to allow himself plenty of time for important matters of bodily and personal health.
“Let’s say eight, then,” GeGurra agreed.
50.
Superintendent Toivonen didn’t have thirty men to investigate the murder of his security guard, as Bäckström believed. By Friday morning the reinforcements had arrived. He had been authorized to borrow people from National Crime, the National Rapid-Response Unit, and the riot squad. From Stockholm County Crime and from the other district covered by the county. Even the police down in Skåne had sent him three investigators from the county’s special armed robbery unit. For the time being he was in charge of almost seventy officers and detectives, as well as his own unit, and he could have had more if he wanted. Nowadays Toivonen got everything he asked for, and he and his group leaders had spent the whole day planning their strategy.
Now the whole operation had to come together. Internal surveillance, outdoor surveillance, monitoring, telephone interception, cell surveillance, bugging, increasing the pressure, stirring up and bringing in the hang-arounds and wannabes in the groups around the Ibrahim brothers and their cousin Hassan Talib. Lock them up, question them, stop their cars, subject them to body searches whenever the opportunity arose, and, if necessary, beat the shit out of them if they said anything inappropriate, made any rapid movements, or simply showed any signs of normal behavior.
“Okay, let’s get to it. The Ibrahims are heading for prison,” Toivonen said with a stern expression and a nod to all his colleagues.
Starting from six o’clock in the evening, Superintendent Jorma Honkamäki and his colleagues from the National Rapid-Response Unit and the Stockholm Police riot squad had carried out a total of ten raids on homes and premises in Huddinge-Botkyrka, Tensta-Rinkeby, and North Järva. They hadn’t asked for permission to enter first. The doors had been uniformly smashed in. Anyone found in the flats and premises had been carried out in handcuffs. Drug-detection dogs, bomb-detection dogs, and ordinary police dogs had been sent in; the furnishings and fittings had been turned upside down; the interior walls of some offices in Flemingsberg were torn down; and money, drugs, weapons, ammunition, explosives, detonators, smoke grenades, caltrops, balaclavas, overalls, handcuffs, loose number plates, and stolen vehicles had all been found. When the sun rose on a new day in the world’s most beautiful capital city, thirty-three people were in custody, and the whole thing was only just starting.
Linda Martinez was the recently appointed superintendent of National Crime’s surveillance unit, brought in by Toivonen and responsible for the outdoor surveillance of the Ibrahim brothers and their cousin. She had chosen her team carefully and she was well aware of her opponents’ weaknesses.
“Not an ordinary Swede as far as the eye can see,” Martinez concluded as she surveyed her forces. “Nothing but black, brown, and blue,” she said with a delighted grin.
Before Toivonen left the Solna police station he had met with his boss, Anna Holt, to inform her of the latest from the Criminal Investigation Service on possible connections between Karl Danielsson, the Ibrahim brothers, and Hassan Talib. Now that they knew what they were looking for, everything had been much easier to find. Among other things, a nine-year-old report about Karl Danielsson’s involvement in money laundering in the wake of the major armed robbery in Akalla, to the north of Stockholm. Because the tip-off could never be backed up with firm evidence, the case had been put to one side and eventually forgotten.
In March 1999, some nine years earlier, at least six masked and armed men had raided the depot of a security transport company out in Akalla. They drove a fifteen-ton forklift truck straight through the wall of the depot. They forced the staff onto the floor, and when they disappeared five minutes later they took with them some hundred million kronor in unmarked n
otes.
“One hundred and one million, six hundred and twelve thousand kronor, to be precise,” Toivonen said, reading from his notes just to be sure.
“That sounds like a decent day’s work,” Holt said. “Not your usual shitty little raid, I mean.”
“No, although it was complete fuckup for us,” Toivonen said.
Not one single krona of the money had been recovered. None of those involved were ever brought to trial, even though everyone had a fair idea of who they were and how the whole thing had been planned and carried out. The only consolation under the circumstances was that none of the staff had been wounded, and that was thanks to the raiders rather than the police.
The kingpin was a well-known gangster of Moroccan descent, Abdul Ben Kader, born 1950, so now approaching sixty. He had lived in Sweden for more than twenty years and popped up regularly in criminal contexts. Everything from illegal gambling and drinking dens, brothels, organized theft, and receipt of stolen goods to insurance scams and armed robbery.
Constantly under suspicion, taken into custody, locked up on three occasions. But never convicted, never obliged to spend a single day as a convicted felon in a Swedish penal institution.
“A couple months after the Akalla raid the bastard retired and went back to Morocco,” Toivonen said with a wry smile. “Apparently he now owns a number of bars and at least one hotel.”
“So where do the Ibrahim brothers and their cousin come into this?” Holt asked.
All three had taken part in the raid. That was the firm belief of Toivonen and his colleagues. Farshad, who had been twenty-eight at the time of the raid, was the one who led the actual operation. His cousin, who was three years younger, had driven the forklift, and his little brother Afsan, then just twenty-three years old, had grabbed as much money as he could get his hands on, even though he was dressed in overalls, gloves, and a full ski mask.