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

by Leif Gw Persson

  “Any good?” Bäckström asked.

  “No,” Annika said, shaking her head. “All mouth, no trousers. Almost exclusively mouth, actually.”

  A woman, talking like that. Where the hell are we heading? Bäckström thought, but contented himself with a nod.

  “I like to keep an open attitude. Don’t want to restrict the field, if I can put it like that,” Annika Carlsson clarified. “Were you wondering anything in particular, Bäckström?”

  “I was actually thinking of going to bed,” Bäckström said. What the hell is happening to Sweden? he thought. To me and all the other normal, decent, hardworking men? What’s going to happen to us?

  82.

  The first thing Bäckström did on Friday morning was to decide to disperse the last remaining cloud in his otherwise clear blue sky. He went straight to Toivonen’s office and asked for a new service pistol, since his own was evidently stuck with forensics until the lazy sods in internal investigations pulled their fingers out.

  “What do you want it for?” Toivonen said, glaring at Bäckström.

  None of your fucking business, Bäckström thought, but contained himself. When you had to deal with complete idiots like Toivonen, it was best to stick to a formal manner of address.

  “I’m a police officer,” Bäckström said. “I have the right to a service weapon. It’s your duty to see that I get one.”

  “Who were you thinking of shooting this time, Bäckström?” Toivonen said, evidently feeling a bit brighter.

  “I want it for my personal protection while I’m on duty, and for other requirements in the line of duty,” Bäckström said. By now he knew the routine.

  “Forget it, Bäckström,” Toivonen said, shaking his head. “Just be honest. You’ve got a taste for it. Running round and shooting people.”

  “I demand a new weapon,” Bäckström repeated, with steely resolve in his voice.

  “Okay, Bäckström,” Toivonen said with a friendly smile. “I’ll try to make it clear. So clear that even you can understand. I am not going to give you another service weapon. Not even if you invite me personally to shove it up your fat ass when I hand it over.”

  “You’ll be getting a written request,” Bäckström said. “Copied to management, for their files. And to the officers’ association.”

  “Go ahead,” Toivonen said. “If management wants to let you have a gun, it’s up to them. But I don’t want anyone else’s blood on my hands.”

  That was as far as they got.

  That evening Toivonen, Niemi, Honkamäki, Alakoski, Arooma, Salonen, and several other Finnish brothers in the force had gone to the Karelia restaurant. Even Superintendent Sommarlund was allowed to go along, even though he really only came from the Swedish-speaking Åland Islands. Men with their roots in Finnish soil, men of the right stuff, with their hearts in the right place, and, as far as Sommarlund was concerned, he could very easily have been born on the Finnish mainland. But to celebrate or to lick their wounds? Who cared? Any reason was good enough, and the intention had been the same as usual.

  They had eaten cured elk snout, salmon and egg pastries, lamb with boiled turnips. They had drunk beer and vodka and sung “Rose of Kotka” with the first, second, and third drinks.

  “Kotkan Ruusu,” Sommarlund said with a dreamy look in his eyes. Must have been one hell of a woman, he thought.

  Bäckström had taken the bull by the horns and gone to see one of the most eager of his new female admirers, one who had also attached photographs of herself when she e-mailed him. Well worth a special trip, to judge by the pictures, and since she lived in the center of the city, he could always walk out if she had passed her sell-by date.

  Maybe they weren’t taken recently, Bäckström thought an hour later, but there was nothing wrong with her enthusiasm. The super-salami had done its usual thorough job, and when he climbed out of the taxi outside his door, the sun had already risen in yet another cloud-free sky. Bäckström walked up to the second floor, seeing as one of his lazy neighbors had evidently forgotten to send the elevator back down, and just as he was standing in the stairwell, fumbling with his keys, he heard the sound of padding footsteps on the stairs above him.

  Earlier that day one of their witnesses had got in touch with Detective Inspector Annika Carlsson.

  “Lawman,” Lawman said. “I don’t know if you remember me. I’m the one who works for Green Carriers. Used to work with Akofeli.”

  “I remember. How can I help you?” Annika Carlsson asked. I wonder if they’ve sorted out those bikes on the pavement like I told them? she wondered.

  “I want to add something to my statement,” Lawman said.

  “Where are you?” Annika Carlsson said. She preferred to talk where she could see the other person.

  “Not far away at all,” Lawman said. “I’ve actually just delivered a package to your police station. To that trigger-happy Bäckström. One of our crazy clients wanted to send him a gift voucher. All a bit dodgy, if you ask me as a lawyer, but …”

  “I’ll come down and get you,” Annika Carlsson said, and five minutes later Lawman was sitting in her office.

  The previous day a thought had struck Lawman. Something he had forgotten to tell Annika Carlsson and her colleague when they spoke at his workplace.

  “You remember that Akofeli asked me about the right of self-defense? How far you could go and so on?”

  “I remember,” Annika said. She had already pulled out his statement.

  “There was something I forgot to tell you,” Lawman said. “It completely slipped my mind.”

  “What’s that?” Annika asked.

  “He asked me to give him an example of the sort of violence that would justify self-defense. I remember mentioning abuse in all its forms, right up to attempted murder. I also said something about jus necessitatis, the right to help someone else.”

  “I know,” Annika Carlsson said. “What was it you forgot to say?”

  “Mister Seven, Septimus, actually asked a concrete question as well. More or less in passing, I thought, considering the context.”

  “What did he ask?”

  “He wanted to know about rape,” Lawman said. “If someone was trying to rape you. Did you have the same right to defend yourself as you did with attempted murder?”

  “And what did you make of that, then?” Annika Carlsson asked.

  “I was pretty blunt,” Lawman said. “I asked him if one of our weird clients had tried it on with him.”

  “What did he say to that?”

  “He just shrugged,” Lawman said. “Didn’t want to talk about it.”

  Denial, Annika Carlsson thought. Just as she had learned in that course on sexual attacks back in the autumn. The denial of the victim, she thought. But seeing as Bäckström had evidently finished for the day, she had no one to talk to.

  I’ll tell him when I look in on him first thing tomorrow morning, she thought.

  Footsteps on Bäckström’s staircase. Little Siggy locked up by the lazy pricks in forensics, so all that was left was another Bäckström one-two, he thought. He walked forward, raised his left hand, and put the right one inside his jacket.

  “Stand absolutely still or I’ll blow your head off,” Bäckström said.

  “Take it easy, for fuck’s sake,” the paperboy said, waving Bäckström’s own copy of Svenska Dagbladet at him just to make sure.

  The paperboy, Bäckström thought, taking the newspaper.

  “Why don’t you take the elevator?” Bäckström said. “Instead of creeping around on the stairs scaring the shit out of people?”

  “I didn’t think you were the type to scare easily, Superintendent,” the paperboy said with a grin. “Nice work, by the way. Saw you on TV the other night.”

  “The elevator,” Bäckström repeated.

  “Right,” the paperboy said. “I do what everyone does. Everyone delivering papers, that is. Take the elevator to the top floor, then come down the stairs.”

  �
�Why don’t you take the elevator back down?” Bäckström said. “That would save you having to walk.”

  “Takes too long,” the paperboy said. “Think about it. Jumping in and out of the elevator, going down one floor at a time. You wouldn’t get your paper before the evening.”

  When Bäckström walked into his own hallway and closed the door behind him he was suddenly struck by a bolt of lightning, lighting up the whole inside of his round head.

  Akofeli, Bäckström thought. Number one Hasselstigen, a five-story building with a lift. Why the hell didn’t you take the elevator up? he thought.

  83.

  “Fresh rolls, peaceful intent, interesting news,” Annika Carlsson said, waving the bag from the bakery.

  “Come in,” Bäckström grunted. He hadn’t had much sleep, since he had spent a couple hours deep in thought before he finally fainted away in his own bed.

  “What time is it, anyway?”

  “Ten o’clock,” Annika Carlsson said. “I took it for granted that you were out carousing all night with one of your many female admirers, so I didn’t come round too early.”

  “Kind of you,” Bäckström said with a wry smile. Open to all comers, he thought. But really quite nice.

  “So if you get in the shower, nice Auntie Annika will get breakfast for you.”

  “Pancakes, bacon?” Bäckström suggested.

  “Out of the question,” Annika said, and snorted.

  “What do you think, Bäckström?” Annika asked half an hour later when she had told him what Lawman had told her.

  “Think about what?” Bäckström said. His mind was on other things.

  “Do you think Kalle Danielsson might have tried to force him to have sex with him? Seems to fit the profile of that sort of perpetrator. Slightly older, alcoholic, mostly male social circle, clearly sexually active, seeing how he had Viagra and condoms in his flat. A young man like Akofeli, black, half his size. Probably quite appealing to someone like Danielsson when he’d had a few and his inhibitions started to wobble.”

  “No chance,” Bäckström said, shaking his head. “Danielsson wasn’t the type.”

  “What do you mean, not the type?” Annika said.

  “The type to fuck people in the ass,” Bäckström said.

  “What do you mean?” Annika Carlsson said. “Even someone like you would have a go if you got the chance.”

  “Male ass,” Bäckström clarified. Open to all comers, he thought.

  “If you say so,” Annika Carlsson said, with a nonchalant shrug.

  “Listen to this instead,” Bäckström said. “Last night when I got home I suddenly realized what it is that doesn’t make sense about Akofeli. You know, the thing I’ve been worrying about.”

  “Okay, okay,” Annika Carlsson said a quarter of an hour later. “So he took the stairs instead of the elevator. What’s the problem? Maybe he wanted some extra exercise. I do a lot of step exercises myself. It’s very good for you, you know.”

  “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” Bäckström said.

  “Okay,” Annika Carlsson said, her little black notebook out at the ready.

  “I want to know all about Akofeli’s newspaper round,” Bäckström said. “What his route was, which building he started in, where he finished, how many papers he delivered in total, how many he delivered in Hasselstigen, and what order he did it in. Clear?”

  “Okay,” Annika Carlsson said with a nod. “And how do I reach you when I’m done?”

  “At work,” Bäckström said. “Just need to throw some clothes on.”

  84.

  Even though it was Saturday Bäckström was sitting at work, thinking hard. He was even thinking so hard that he forgot about lunch.

  “So this is where you are,” Annika Carlsson said. “I was looking for you down in the cafeteria.”

  “Thinking,” Bäckström said.

  “You were right,” Annika Carlsson said. “There’s something really weird about the way Akofeli delivered his papers.”

  Surprise, surprise, Bäckström thought. By that time he already had a fairly firm idea of what was going on.

  “Tell me,” Bäckström said.

  Every day at three in the morning Akofeli and the other deliverers who worked the same district picked up their papers from the distribution company’s collection point on Råsundavägen. In Akofeli’s case, just over two hundred Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet, and a dozen copies of Dagens Industri. Then he followed a fixed route that the distribution company had worked out for him, intended to stop him doing any more walking than he needed to as he delivered them.

  “You can pretty much say he kept to the block to the north-west, and there were only two more buildings on his round after the building at number one Hasselstigen. The whole thing ought to take between two and a half and three hours, and the idea is that everyone should have received their paper by six o’clock at the latest.”

  “The last two buildings?” Bäckström asked.

  “This is where it starts to get weird,” Annika Carlsson said. “The last building on his round is number four Hasselstigen, and the second to last is number two Hasselstigen. Number four is down by the junction with Råsundavägen, and the underground station home to Rinkeby where he lives is a couple hundred meters farther down Råsundavägen. Instead of taking the shortest route, it looks like he rearranged the end of his route. He goes past number one Hasselstigen without delivering any papers. He goes straight to number four, which should be the last building, and delivers papers there. Then he goes back up the road to number two, the penultimate building, and hands out papers there. Then he crosses the road and finishes his round by delivering the papers in number one Hasselstigen.”

  “A detour of a couple hundred meters,” Bäckström said. By now he was well acquainted with the geography.

  “More than three hundred meters, actually,” Annika Carlsson said, having checked the distances herself just a couple hours before.

  “An entirely unnecessary detour that must have cost him at least five minutes,” she went on. “It’s a bit odd, seeing he might reasonably be expected to want to get home to Rinkeby as quickly as he can, to dump his cart and get a couple hours’ sleep before he heads off to work as a courier.”

  “Then what?” Bäckström said. “What does he do inside number one Hasselstigen?”

  “This is where it gets even weirder.”

  There were eleven tenants in number 1 Hasselstigen who subscribed to a morning paper: six Dagens Nyheter and five copies of Svenska Dagbladet. Only ten since Karl Danielsson’s murder, and because old Mrs. Holmberg had switched from DN to Svenska Dagbladet, the two media groups were evenly matched for now.

  “Five DN, five Svenska Dagbladet,” Annika Carlsson summarized.

  What did that have to do with anything? Bäckström thought.

  “I’m listening,” he said.

  “The first to get her paper is Mrs. Holmberg, who lives on the ground floor. That’s not so strange, since he passes her door on the way to the elevator. Then he should have taken the elevator to the top floor of the building and walked down the stairs delivering the remaining ten copies on the way. The last person in the block to get their paper ought therefore to be our murder victim, Karl Danielsson, because he lives on the second floor and is the only person on that floor to take a newspaper.”

  “But not that morning?” Bäckström said.

  “No,” Annika Carlsson said. “Because, as you pointed out when you arrived at the crime scene, Akofeli still had the papers left in his bag. According to the inventory Niemi and Hernandez took when they arrived at the scene, he had nine morning papers left in his shoulder bag. And they’re both meticulous. Eleven minus the one he delivered to Mrs. Holmberg minus the one he was going to deliver to Karl Danielsson when he saw his door ajar and found Danielsson lying dead in his hall.”

  “The newspaper that he put down beside the door,” Bäckström said.

  “Exactly,” A
nnika Carlsson said.

  “Did he always do it like that?”

  “Seems to have been doing for a fair while, at any rate,” Annika Carlsson said. “At least that’s my impression.”

  “What makes you think that?” Bäckström said.

  “I got to the crime scene just before seven in the morning, and I agreed with Niemi that I would search the building while they carried on inside Danielsson’s apartment. On the ground floor there’s a room used for storing bicycles and strollers. Not many, because most of the tenants are pensioners, but there were still one stroller and several bikes in there. As well as Akofeli’s cart. According to the inventory I wrote at the time, even though it didn’t strike me as odd then.”

  “Why not leave it by the front door?” Bäckström said. “That would have been simplest for him.”

  “That’s what I think too, although it didn’t occur to me at the time. You’re just smarter than me, Bäckström,” Annika Carlsson said with a smile.

  “Well …,” Bäckström said, smiling his most modest smile.

  “Then, while I was busy in there, one of the tenants came down to get her bike,” Annika Carlsson went on.

  “In a state of extreme anxiety,” Bäckström said.

  “Yes, she was wondering what had happened, since there must have been at least ten of us there by that time, searching the building. I didn’t go into detail. I explained that we were there because of an emergency call we’d received. I asked who she was and what she was doing down with the bicycles. She told me her name, even showed me her ID before I asked for it. She explained that she lived in the building, that she was on her way to work, and that she always took her bike if the weather was good enough. She works as a receptionist in the Scandic Hotel down by the motorway to Arlanda Airport. It’s about five kilometers away, and she was due to start work at eight o’clock.”