The Sword of Justice

by Leif G. W. Persson

  ‘I know who he is, because I’ve had him in the taxi,’ Ara said. ‘Fredrik Åkare.’

  ‘Former head of the Hells Angels out in Solna. Best mates with García Gomez. They’re like Siamese twins. Only ever appear together. If you ask me, there’s a good chance he was driving that Merc you saw, and that he was the one who put the lights on full beam when you were driving away.’

  This just gets better and better, Ara thought, but made do with a nod.

  ‘Pull yourself together, now, Ara,’ Omar said with a wide grin, patting him on the arm. ‘Omar’s going to fix this. Omar’s friends have nothing to worry about. Least of all if we’re talking about Omar’s best mate when they were nothing but a couple of shitty little schoolkids down in Småland.’

  ‘What do we do?’ Ara asked. We, he thought. Not I. What do we do?

  ‘I’ve already fixed this for you. To start with, I’ve sorted a new place for you to crash. Somewhere you can hide up until it’s time to get away from here. Just pack the essentials and I’ll drive you there. And you need to call work and sign off sick until further notice. If you need a medical certificate, I can get one for you.’

  ‘What do I do about the journalist? He keeps ringing and banging on the whole time.’

  ‘Obviously, you’re going to keep the money he gave you. After all, you kept your part of the bargain and, if he doesn’t get that, that’s his problem, not yours. So you can forget all about him from now on,’ Omar said, putting his hand in his pocket and pulling out a new mobile phone. ‘New mobile, new life, and nothing to worry about. Agreed?’

  What choice have I got? Ara thought, and simply nodded.

  65

  Because it was Friday, Bäckström had decided to move the meeting of his investigative team back to ten o’clock in the morning, but even though he had arrived at work half an hour before the meeting, to have time to clear his head before it started, he had barely managed to sit down behind his desk before there was a knock on his door. Jenny Rogersson, with her bosom heaving, and rosy red cheeks, wearing a top the same colour, and if possible even more excited than she had been during their first meeting four days earlier.

  ‘Sit yourself down, Jenny,’ Bäckström said. ‘What can I do for you?’ If she could just breathe a bit deeper and lean forward a bit more, they might well pop out, he thought.

  ‘I’m pretty sure we’ve made a breakthrough with the case, boss,’ Jenny said, leaning forward and adjusting her top as she put a thin plastic folder of papers on his desk. ‘I’ve put together a summary this morning, as a starting point in case you wanted to raise it with the others during the meeting. It’s almost too good to be true,’ she added.

  ‘It’s probably better if you explain,’ Bäckström said, giving her a half-Clint, leaning back and putting his feet up on his desk. He crossed his legs, as a precaution.

  ‘Our witness has been in touch again.’

  ‘Which one?’ Bäckström asked. There must be at least a hundred of them by now, of whom maybe two or three might turn out to be anything other than total fantasists, he thought.

  ‘Our anonymous witness. The woman out at Drottningholm who saw that baron being assaulted with an auction catalogue. She’s sent another letter, which arrived this morning. She recognized the perpetrator when she saw his picture in the paper. She’s one hundred per cent certain that it’s him.’

  ‘So who is it, then?’ Bäckström asked, even though he already suspected he knew the answer.

  ‘Thomas Eriksson, the lawyer. Our murder victim,’ Jenny Rogersson said. ‘I’ve checked with the vehicle registration database. What she said about nines at the end. It fits, so that’s a hundred per cent as well,’ Jenny said, tapping her forefinger on the plastic folder that she had given him.

  ‘Nines at the end?’ What the fuck’s she going on about? he thought.

  ‘The licence plate of the perpetrator’s car,’ Jenny explained. ‘As I’m sure you remember, boss, our witness – our anonymous witness, I mean – wrote in her first letter that she couldn’t remember the registration number of the car, but she was pretty sure that it ended with one, possibly two nines.’

  ‘So you’ve checked Eriksson’s vehicle details?’ Bäckström said.

  ‘Sure, boss,’ Jenny Rogersson replied, smiling and taking back the folder she had given him. ‘We got that information on Monday. Because, of course, his cars were in the garage of his house when he was murdered. Looks like Eriksson had two vehicles at his disposal: a British 4x4, a green Range Rover, for which he’s registered as the owner, and a black Audi A8 that’s owned by the law firm, and the registration number of that particular vehicle just happens to be XPW 299. Am I right, or am I right?’

  ‘I think you’re right,’ Bäckström said. ‘Even though I’m having a hard time believing that an old antiques poof could have murdered Eriksson.’ Unless he was the one who shat himself on the sofa, he thought.

  ‘Yes,’ Jenny said, nodding eagerly. ‘That bit troubles me too. Admittedly, I’ve never met him, we’ve only spoken on the phone, but he doesn’t feel right. Sounds mostly like one of those stuck-up types. So I think we might have been on the wrong track there. If you like, boss, I could explain my thinking now that we’ve found the connection between Eriksson and that von Comer bloke.’

  ‘Yes, if you could, please,’ Bäckström said. What does she mean by ‘we’ and ‘connection’? he thought.

  ‘At first I thought it was that old woman with the rabbit who was behind everything, Astrid Elisabeth Linderoth. Then I worked out the connection between Eriksson’s murder and the fact that he was evidently the person who assaulted our baron in the car park, but then it struck me that she’s also a victim, because she had her rabbit taken away from her, I mean—’

  ‘Hang on a minute, now,’ Bäckström said. ‘As far as the rabbit’s concerned, it was that nutter Fridensdal who saw to it that the old bag lost it. Are you saying Fridensdal is behind everything?’ This is getting better and better, he thought.

  ‘No,’ Jenny said, shaking her head hard. ‘Fridensdal doesn’t feel right either. Besides, she was threatened by that nasty character that she didn’t dare stand witness against. There has to be someone else, some unknown perpetrator that we haven’t tracked down yet who’s behind Eriksson’s murder, the assault in the car park and the fact that that poor old lady had her rabbit taken into care, not to mention the threats made against the animal rights activist who reported her, Fridensdal. If we can just find that person, I’m convinced all the pieces will fall into place.’

  Bäckström made do with a nod. First, we’ve got two faggots squabbling in a car park, then a mad old bag whose rabbit is taken into care because of the actions of a common or garden nutter who is in turn threatened by a real thug and, finally, we have a lawyer who gets beaten to death and then given an extra going-over when he’s already dead, just for good measure. And behind all this is evidently one single, as yet unknown perpetrator. Little Jenny’s head must be the only eleven-pointer on the global ten-point fuckwit scale, he thought.

  ‘What do we do now, boss? I mean, how do we take this forward?’ Jenny asked.

  ‘Okay, here’s what I think we should do,’ Bäckström said, taking his feet off the desk just in case the super-salami started to limber up. ‘For the time being, what you’ve told me stays between us. Not a word to any of the others.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ Jenny agreed.

  ‘Excellent, then we’re in agreement,’ Bäckström said. That way I won’t have to watch the Anchor dragging you out by your ears, he thought.

  ‘Just one last question, boss,’ Jenny said.

  ‘I’m listening,’ Bäckström said.

  ‘What do we do about the Security Police? They’ll need to be informed of this, won’t they? I mean, according to that rule, we have a duty to let them know.’

  ‘Of course,’ Bäckström said, nodding sombrely. ‘Of course we need to inform the Security Police. Goes without saying. The best idea wou
ld be for you to send them your summary at once.’ That’ll give those desk-jockeys something to think about over the weekend. They can probably turn that antiques poof into another royal scandal, he thought.

  ‘My memo’s already written, so that won’t be a problem,’ Jenny said, nodding and waving the papers in her hand. ‘I’ll do it straight away.’

  ‘Do that,’ Bäckström agreed. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me. I’ve got some preparations I need to take care of before the meeting.’

  Eleven points isn’t enough, Bäckström thought as she closed the door behind her. Jenny is definitely a twelve-pointer. With a head like that, she’s clearly utterly unique.

  66

  Dan Andersson was a cautious man. When he had asked for a meeting with Lisa Mattei the day before, he had also emailed her a brief explanation. Because he was also a man of few words, with an eye for the important details, he hadn’t needed more than two pages to give his ultimate superior everything she needed to know. No prioritized security issue, for her eyes only, merely in case things took an unexpected and unfortunate turn for the worse.

  To begin with, he had given her a brief description of the person at the centre of all this. A 63-year-old baron with a PhD in art history. Married for the past thirty years to the same woman, father of two grown-up daughters who were both married and – and this was the main point – not exactly one of the royal couple’s closest friends, even if he did know them personally and had met them on numerous occasions under private circumstances. For the past twenty years or so, he and his wife had rented a villa that lay just a couple of hundred metres from Drottningholm Palace which belonged to the court’s property portfolio. The reason they had ended up among this exclusive group of tenants was thanks to his wife’s background in the higher nobility.

  In spite of his title, Hans Ulrik von Comer had no property or estate of his own, which had been a matter of concern to his future father-in-law when he asked for his youngest daughter’s hand in marriage. After some hesitation, the duke – the future father-in-law – had relented. He had four daughters and a son, who was going to be taking over the large entailed estate that the family had owned and managed for the previous three centuries, and for him that was what life was all about. The survival of the family, the fact that the eldest son would keep the line going and the land they passed on.

  Things had been that way for more than three hundred years, and hopefully would continue to be so in the years to come, despite worrying signs in the modern world. Ten years ago, von Comer’s father-in-law had died at the respectable age of ninety but, because his son lived according to the family motto and in the traditions of his forebears, the old duke was in good humour when he completed his earthly pilgrimage. His eldest child, his only son, had been a close friend of His Majesty the King since childhood. A close enough friend to be able to extract a small favour in the form of a house that lay in the vicinity of Drottningholm Palace for the younger sister and brother-in-law whose lot was less favourable than his.

  After this description of the person at the centre of his report, Dan Andersson had moved on to the two occurrences that troubled him enough for him to feel it worth informing his boss about them. First, the incident in the car park outside the palace theatre on the evening of Sunday, 19 May, which the police in Solna had informed the Security Police about. Dan Andersson managed to condense his description of events to fifteen lines. Even though he shared his junior colleague Rogersson’s belief that the baron, in spite of his claims to the contrary, had in fact been assaulted, possibly even been the victim of aggravated assault, that in itself wouldn’t have been reason enough to bother Lisa Mattei. The decisive factor in the whole matter was an observation made by their own intelligence division when he had requested a check into von Comer’s background and circumstances.

  On Friday, 31 May, the king and queen had held a dinner at Drottningholm Palace for some fifty guests, the majority of whom were personal friends. Even though this wasn’t a particularly grand affair, a number of the guests were important enough to demand the deployment of a total of eight different bodyguards. The occasion had also been more convivial than the Security Police had anticipated. The party had dragged on until past midnight, and at ten o’clock that evening the duty officer in charge of the personal protection unit had had to replace two of the bodyguards, who had been on duty since the morning and were also due back at work early the following morning.

  For reasons that were unclear from the intelligence report Dan Andersson had been given, the two colleagues who had been relieved of duty so that they could go home and sleep had nonetheless decided to round the evening off with a short drive round the streets close to the palace. Presumably just to check things out seeing as they were passing, Dan Andersson thought. He appreciated officers showing initiative like that.

  When they passed the house where Baron von Comer lived, they had made an observation which had prompted them to compose a report of the incident that very same evening.

  Baron von Comer had received a visit from two men, the sort of men with whom someone like him would not usually be expected to associate. The baron and his two visitors were standing in the garden outside von Comer’s half-open front door, and before they parted he had shaken hands with both of them, even if the surveillance photographs taken by the bodyguards seemed to suggest that it was his guests rather than von Comer himself who took the initiative on this by holding out their hands to him.

  One of the two bodyguards, a recent recruit to the unit, was a female detective inspector, thirty-one years old. Her name was Sandra Kovac, and she had spent the entirety of her ten years in the force working in surveillance. When she graduated from the police academy she had been recruited directly to the Security Police, and a few years later had accompanied her boss when he moved to National Crime, where she joined the surveillance unit. She had worked in a group which focused on mapping the activities of a hundred or so of the most dangerous people in organized crime in the country.

  Among her colleagues, Sandra Kovac had a very good reputation. She possessed all the qualities that characterized a first-class surveillance officer. She had accumulated a great deal of knowledge, was known for dealing only in hard facts, and had immediately recognized both of von Comer’s visitors.

  ‘Bloody hell. Drive past and stop the car so I can get some decent pictures,’ Kovac said, reaching for the camera in the footwell in front of the passenger seat.

  ‘I didn’t know you worked freelance for the gossip mags.’ Her older male colleague sighed. He had been looking forward to going to bed for far too long now. But because Kovac was who she was, obviously, he had done as she asked. He pulled discreetly into a free parking space a hundred metres along the road and turned the headlights off.

  ‘The one in the blue jacket is Baron Hans Ulrik von Comer,’ her colleague said. ‘If you don’t believe me, just take a look in any edition of the aforementioned magazines. He’s rumoured to be one of the biggest freeloaders in the country. He’ll stand and grin on every page if there’s a bit of free food and drink.’

  ‘Never mind him,’ Kovac said as she took the first pictures. ‘It’s the other two I’m interested in.’

  ‘So who are they, then?’ her colleague asked. ‘I haven’t got a clue, but if you asked me to judge by their appearances, I’d hazard a guess that they don’t live locally. Nor do they seem to be friends of His Majesty, in spite of all the crap in the papers.’

  ‘Hells Angels,’ Kovac said. ‘Laurel and Hardy on motorbikes. That massive one in the leather jacket, the one with the ponytail, he’s Fredrik Åkare, and the one who’s half his size and only weighs ninety kilos is his best mate. His name’s Angel García Gomez. Usually known as the Madman, El Loco. And that’s an affectionate nickname, if you’re wondering.’

  ‘I see what you mean,’ her colleague said with a nod. ‘In that case, I’ve just got one more wish.’

  ‘Which is what?’ Kovac said, adjusting the telephot
o lens and snapping a few last pictures before putting the camera back down on the floor.

  ‘That you write up the incident report. Because I want to get home and go to bed.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Kovac said, taking out her mobile. ‘I’ll get started on that now while you tail them and see where they go.’

  ‘I read online that the Angels are supposed to be having some big gathering down in Skåne this weekend. So I daresay they’re heading—’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Sandra Kovac interrupted. ‘I reckon they’re just going to cross the bridge and go back to their little clubhouse over by Bromma Airport.’

  ‘You were right,’ Kovac’s colleague declared fifteen minutes later as Åkare and García Gomez unlocked the gate in the tall, barbed-wire-topped fence surrounding their clubhouse in Ulvsunda and disappeared out of view of Kovac and her camera.

  ‘Of course I was right, and the pictures are pretty good as well,’ Sandra Kovac said. She hadn’t gained her reputation by accident.

  ‘Baron Hans Ulrik von Comer’s personal contacts therefore give some cause for concern,’ Detective Superintendent Dan Andersson wrote in conclusion at the end of the summary that he emailed to his boss. To support his account, he attached the surveillance pictures that DI Kovac had taken, as well as the incident report she submitted the same evening.

  The following morning – four hours before Detective Superintendent Dan Andersson was due to meet Deputy Police Commissioner Lisa Mattei – the Solna Police contacted him again and Dan Andersson had to postpone his lunch, as the routine information he had been planning to give his boss had just been transformed into a high-priority security issue, which in turn required more thorough investigation.

  This just keeps getting worse and worse, he thought with a sigh, even though he knew he was prone to worrying about things unnecessarily.

  67