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

by Leif Gw Persson

  “I’m listening,” Bäckström said. Here goes the whole fucking bird feeder, he thought.

  “The only person who could have been sitting at Seppo’s computer is him. It’s completely out of the question that anyone else might have been sitting there.”

  “What makes you think that, Nadja?” Bäckström said.

  “Because Seppo is unique,” Nadja said. “There’s probably only one person anywhere who’s like him.”

  What the fuck is she saying? Bäckström thought. The boy’s retarded, for God’s sake.

  “He spent that night solving Sudoku puzzles, you know, those Japanese number puzzles that all the papers are full of. The difference is that the ones he was solving on his computer were three-dimensional, a bit like a Rubik’s Cube, you know. From the computer log I know which quizzes he solved and how he did it. He solves them in such a way and at such speed that I believe he has a quite unique intelligence. There’s probably only one Seppo in the whole world.”

  “But the poor lad’s soft in the head,” Bäckström said.

  “No,” Nadja said. “I may be no doctor, but I’m guessing he’s got a particular form of autism, which means that his speech has fallen behind. We think he talks like a child. In actual fact he says nothing beyond what is necessary to convey his message. Pretty much like young children talk before their parents teach them a load of unnecessary words, irony, sarcasm, and how to lie.”

  “So the lad’s a genius?” What the hell is she saying? Bäckström thought.

  “Definitely a mathematical genius,” Nadja said. “Socially handicapped? Sure, if we’re measuring him in our own terms. When he hit Danielsson in the face the first time he said he did it because he was angry at him for pushing his mother. The next time he does it is when he’s angry again, because his mother doesn’t want to talk to him. Surely you can’t say it any more straightforwardly than that? When he helps Danielsson into the lift after the first time, he says that Danielsson got in the lift and went home. Not that Danielsson pressed to go down in the lift and got out at the first floor, where he lives. And then went into his flat and closed the door behind him. All the things that normal adults would have said without actually having a clue. Read your own record of the interview, Lars. Read it,” Nadja said.

  “You’re absolutely sure, Nadja? About what you’re suggesting, I mean?” Annika Carlsson said.

  “Absolutely sure,” Nadja said. “This morning I e-mailed him a three-dimensional Sudoku, which I’ve spent the past three weeks grappling with, whenever I haven’t had anything better to do.

  “I got it back right away,” Nadja said. “He even told me what I needed to do. In his own basic, childish language.”

  “Okay,” Bäckström said. “I don’t think we’re going to get much further. Besides, we’ve got plenty to do.”

  “We’re listening,” Annika Carlsson said, leaning over her notebook.

  “We’ll have to go door-to-door in number one Hasselstigen for a third time,” Bäckström said. “Take some good pictures of the Ibrahim brothers and Hassan Talib and see if anyone has ever seen them there. It would be particularly interesting if anyone has ever seen them have any contact with Karl Danielsson.”

  “You think there could be a connection between our two murders and Toivonen’s investigation?” Annika Carlsson said.

  “Don’t know,” Bäckström said. “But Toivonen seems to think there is,” he said. “And because I’ve always been a nice, accommodating colleague, I thought I’d better look into it.”

  “Okay, that’s what we’ll do,” Annika Carlsson said, getting up abruptly.

  “I thought I might help out this time,” said Bäckström, who had been carrying a deadly weapon for several hours now and was longing to get out into the jungle beyond the police station.

  “Can I sit down?” Nadja said when she came into Bäckström’s office just a couple minutes after the meeting.

  “Of course, Nadja,” Bäckström said, smiling his friendliest smile. “You should know, my door’s always open for you.” I wonder what’s happening with that vodka she said she could get hold of? he thought.

  “How can I help you?” he went on.

  “You can help me with this,” Nadja said, holding up Karl Danielsson’s black pocket diary.

  “I thought we’d already solved that bit,” Bäckström said.

  “I’m not so sure anymore,” Nadja said.

  “Tell me,” Bäckström said, as he adopted his favorite position, and, for safety’s sake, put his feet up on his desk so that his visitor could at least catch a glimpse of little Siggy’s nose.

  “There’s something that isn’t right,” Nadja said.

  “With your calculations of how much money he gave them?” Bäckström asked.

  “No,” Nadja said. “There isn’t much wrong with those, if the assumptions are correct, and I’m absolutely convinced it’s all about money.”

  “I’m listening,” Bäckström said. Like a razor blade, he thought.

  “The psychology doesn’t fit my picture of Danielsson,” Nadja said. “If it really is the case that he paid out money pretty much every week to Farshad Ibrahim, Afsan Ibrahim, and Hassan Talib, in other words, the initials FI, AFS, and HA, I can’t understand why he’d take the risk of writing it down in his own notebook.”

  “Maybe he wanted to give you and me a little clue in case anything ever happened to him,” Bäckström said. “A sort of extra insurance.”

  “I wondered that as well,” Nadja said. “But in that case why not give the actual amounts? Why does he say that Farshad gets ten times as much as Hassan, and on one occasion twenty times as much, and that Afsan gets four times as much as Hassan?”

  “That’s quite natural. Farshad is their leader, Afsan is his younger brother, and Hassan on the other hand is just a cousin from the country who’s allowed to pick up a few crumbs.”

  “The general assumption seems to be that the money came from the Akalla raid nine years ago, that time when they more or less tore a whole security depot apart,” Nadja said. “Farshad leads the operation, Hassan gets the heavy work and drives the truck through the wall, and little brother Afsan gets to stuff the bags. I can maybe buy the fact that Farshad gets most, but shouldn’t Ben Kader have given a larger share to Hassan Talib than to Afsan Ibrahim?”

  “Maybe they deposited different amounts with Danielsson the banker?” Bäckström said, smiling slyly at her.

  “Maybe,” Nadja said with a shrug. “Another possibility could be that we’re completely wrong about it all, in spite of Toivonen and his tip-off.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That the initials FI, AFS, and HA mean something completely different, other people, maybe not even people, something else entirely,” Nadja said, shrugging again to emphasize her point.

  “But you only ever give money to people, surely?” Bäckström said. “You said yourself that you’re convinced this is about money, and the initials match their names. They’re not exactly common names either. I think you’re worrying unnecessarily,” Bäckström said.

  “I’ve been wrong before,” Nadja said, getting up.

  “We’re going to solve this,” Bäckström said, nodding to instill courage and comfort now that his only colleague worthy of the name seemed to be faltering.

  “Yes, I don’t doubt that,” Nadja said.

  60.

  Before he left the fortress, Bäckström took the chance to leaf through the bundles of paper that Nadja had given him.

  Doesn’t sound like they were ever in the church choir, Bäckström thought, when he had finished reading.

  Farshad Ibrahim was thirty-seven years old and had arrived in Sweden when he was four. Dad, mom, two older sisters, and an aged grandmother. Six people in total, all of them political refugees from Iran.

  In Sweden the family was augmented with two younger brothers for Farshad. Afsan, now thirty-two, and little brother Nasir, twenty-five. Grandmother died the year after th
ey came to Sweden. The two older sisters were married and had moved out of the family home. These days five people lived in the big villa in Sollentuna. The three Ibrahim brothers and their parents, and the real head of the family was Farshad, since his father had suffered a serious stroke three years before.

  In any moral sense, he was a highly dubious leader. When he was fifteen Farshad had stabbed and killed a schoolmate of the same age. He was found guilty of manslaughter and handed over to Social Services. This didn’t seem to have had any sort of positive effect on his life. Possibly it made him craftier, seeing as it was another ten years before he was sent to prison for the first time. Four years for aggravated robbery, most of the sentence being served in the same secure unit as one of Superintendent Toivonen’s most assiduous informants.

  A few months before he was due to be released he had been moved to an ordinary prison so that he could be prepared for his future life outside the walls. This too proved to be an ambitious failure.

  After just one week, one of Farshad’s fellow prisoners had been found strangled with a washing line in the institution’s laundry. Everything suggested that Farshad had taken the chance to get rid of a squealing faggot. Everything, that is, except conclusive evidence and a resolutely silent Farshad.

  When he finally got out he was almost immediately suspected of the big raid on the security depot in Akalla. He was taken into custody for three months, said nothing, and was released on lack of evidence. Farshad was now a man with a reputation. Ben Kader’s heir, even though Ben Kader was Moroccan and Farshad Iranian. A Muslim, teetotaler, no suspicions of drug use. And no casual female contact—in fact, no women at all, apparently, if you didn’t count his mother and two sisters. Above all, no parking fines, no speeding offenses, no disorderly conduct. Dangerous, silent, only three people he seemed to trust and had any sort of relationship with: his two younger brothers, Afsan and Nasir; and his cousin Hassan Talib.

  Two younger brothers who, judging by their criminal records, were following in Farshad’s footsteps, or at least were trying to without quite succeeding. In the eyes of society it was probably Nasir, the youngest, who looked like the black sheep of the family, since he had served three prison sentences in the space of four years, and all by the age of twenty-five. Grievous bodily harm, rape, robbery. According to the notes in police records, he was also well acquainted with both sex and drugs, and didn’t seem to care much what form these took. But no alcohol. A dutiful Muslim in that respect. Not your usual Swede, who drank and spilled the beans on everyone and everything to anyone who could be bothered to listen.

  Brought in for questioning by the police more than a hundred times over the years. Initially in the company of his mother and Social Services. A silent Nasir.

  “My name is Nasir Ibrahim,” Nasir said, before rattling off his ID number. “I have nothing more to say.”

  “You’re just like your older brother Farshad,” yet another police interviewer would say.

  “That’s my eldest brother you’re talking about. Respect, when you talk about him.”

  “Of course,” the interviewer would say. “Let’s start there, and talk about your eldest brother, Farshad Ibrahim. He’s well known for showing other people respect.”

  “My name is Nasir Ibrahim, eighty-three zero-two zero-six …”

  Never any more than that when there were police officers around. Out on the town was another matter. There were surveillance pictures, bugged conversations, and reluctant witnesses to testify to that. On a couple occasions even Farshad had been forced to discipline his brother in an almost Old Testament way, even though they were both Muslims.

  Hassan Talib was the country cousin in both a metaphorical and a literal sense. He had moved to Sweden with his family some years after the Ibrahim family. He spent his first years in his new homeland with his extended family in the house in Sollentuna. Thirty-six years old, thirty-three of them spent in Sweden. Convictions for manslaughter, grievous bodily harm, robbery, making unlawful threats, extortion. Suspected of murder, a number of armed robberies, yet another murder, and one attempted murder. Three prison sentences totaling ten years, of which he served eight. Farshad’s bodyguard, muscle, right-hand man. A terrifying figure, two meters tall, one hundred and thirty kilos, shaved head, dark, deep-set eyes, stubble, grinding jaws as if he were constantly chewing something.

  The sort whose head little Siggy would like to comb a parting on, Bäckström thought. He got up abruptly and gave his well-cut yellow linen trousers a shake.

  “Come on, punks, come on, all of you, make my day!” Detective Superintendent Evert Bäckström snarled.

  61.

  Door-to-door. The third time around at number 1 Hasselstigen. Now it was all about Farshad Ibrahim, Afsan Ibrahim, Hassan Talib, and any contact they may have had with Karl Danielsson. They also had good pictures: their own recent surveillance photographs, complemented in the name of justice with a number of similar figures who had nothing to do with any of this. Linda Martinez’s faithful colleagues. Only the olive-skinned variety, no brown, black, or blue. Even though Frank Motoele had offered his services when he helped his boss put together the material.

  Seppo Laurén hadn’t seen anything, even though Alm did his best to prompt him.

  “I haven’t seen them,” Seppo said, shaking his head.

  “Take another look, just to make sure,” Alm cajoled. “The people we’re interested are foreigners—immigrants, if you like.”

  “I don’t understand what you mean,” Seppo said, shaking his head.

  A proper little genius, Alm thought, sighing and taking back his photographs.

  “But these pictures are only of foreigners, or immigrants, as I suppose you have to say these days,” Mrs. Stina Holmberg said.

  “But there’s no one here that you recognize, Mrs. Holmberg?” Jan O. Stigson said.

  “Out here in Solna it’s nearly all immigrants,” Mrs. Holmberg said, nodding amiably at Felicia Pettersson.

  “Not that that has anything to do with anything,” she added.

  Most of the neighbors hadn’t recognized anyone.

  One Iraqi immigrant who lived on the third floor and worked as a ticket collector on the underground had, however, expressed his appreciation of the work of the police.

  “I think you’re on the right track,” the ticket collector said, nodding to Annika Carlsson.

  “Why do you think that?” Carlsson asked.

  “Iranians, it’s obvious,” the ticket collector said, and chuckled. “They’re crazy, they’re capable of anything.”

  Bäckström had joined in relatively late, and after a preparatory conversation with his colleague Carlsson.

  “I think it would be best if you and I talk to that Andersson woman,” Bäckström said. “Considering young Stigson,” he clarified.

  “I understand exactly what you mean,” Annika Carlsson agreed.

  In actual fact Bäckström hadn’t been thinking of their colleague Stigson. He was out on his own investigative business. After his encounter with Tatiana Thorén—which was bound to become a long-term affair, since she seemed to be completely crazy about him—it was high time for a comparative study, to make sure he didn’t let himself in for any problems in the future.

  Old women get so fucking saggy as they get older, Bäckström thought.

  Mrs. Britt-Marie Andersson had provided them with a golden nugget. Or two, to be precise.

  She has to have some sort of fucking metal framework up top, Bäckström thought half an hour later when he and his colleague Carlsson were sitting on Britt-Marie Andersson’s sofa showing her the photographs. Even though their presumptive witness had the same impressive volume as Tatiana, who was half her age, they still maintained the same elevation.

  What the hell does she do when she lets them hang loose? Bäckström wondered. Does she have to lie on her back first, or what?

  “I recognize this one,” Mrs. Andersson said excitedly, pointing at a picture of Farshad I
brahim. Just to make sure, she had leaned toward Bäckström, pointing with a red fingernail.

  Incredible, Bäckström thought, trying to tear his eyes away and look at where she had put her finger.

  “You’re quite sure?” Annika Carlsson said.

  “Quite sure,” Mrs. Andersson said, nodding to Bäckström.

  “When did you last see him?” Bäckström asked.

  “The day Danielsson was murdered,” Mrs. Andersson said. “It must have been in the morning, when I took Little Sweetie outside. They were standing in the road talking to each other. Right outside the door.”

  “You’re quite sure?” Annika Carlsson repeated, exchanging a meaningful look with Bäckström, who had finally got control of himself and was leaning back in the sofa just to be on the safe side. There was no way he could lift his leg, because the old bag would doubtless get turned on if she caught a glimpse of Siggy, he thought.

  “And that one,” Mrs. Andersson said, putting her finger on Hassan Talib. “He’s a really big man, isn’t he?”

  “Two meters tall,” Bäckström confirmed.

  “It’s him, then. He was leaning against a car on the other side of the road, watching Danielsson and that other one, the one Danielsson was talking to.”

  “Did you see what sort of car it was?” Carlsson asked.

  “Black, I’m sure of that. One of those expensive, low ones. Like a Mercedes, or maybe a BMW.”

  “Could it have been a Lexus?” Carlsson asked.

  “I don’t know,” Mrs. Andersson said. “I’m not good with cars. I’ve got a driving license, but I haven’t had a car for years now.”

  “But you remember the big man standing there?” Bäckström said.

  “I’m absolutely sure of it,” Mrs. Andersson said. “He was standing there staring at me, to put it bluntly. When I happened to look over at him, he … well, he gestured to me. With his tongue, I mean,” Mrs. Andersson clarified. She was starting to blush.