The Sword of Justice

by Leif G. W. Persson

  ‘A load of old paintings,’ the Anchor said, shaking her head again as she leafed through the photographs. ‘I haven’t seen anything like this there. Are you saying that these paintings are supposed to be in Eriksson’s house?’

  ‘Doesn’t harm to take another look,’ Bäckström said, shrugging his shoulders expressively. ‘Even if I have a feeling that they were in those white removal boxes our witnesses saw being carried out of the house. The paintings in those photographs are old Russian icons that Eriksson is supposed to have received so he could sell them on behalf of a client. Some of them are said to be very valuable. We’re talking millions of kronor, according to my source,’ he explained.

  ‘You think they missed one, and that’s why they went back later that night,’ Annika Carlsson said, suddenly sounding considerably brighter. ‘I’m with you now, boss. Some people he already knows, who themselves know that he’s got these paintings, show up and rob him. They don’t get everything they came for. So they come back for another go later that night. That would certainly explain a few things.’

  ‘An extra look never does any harm,’ Bäckström repeated, seeing as the attack-dyke by his side had just swallowed the bait, hook, line and sinker.

  ‘I quite agree,’ the Anchor said firmly. ‘Let’s get going.’

  ‘One more thing,’ Bäckström said as soon as they had pulled out into the street. ‘Call in at Systembolaget in Solna shopping centre. I’ve just remembered that I need to buy a bottle of whisky.’

  ‘Whisky?’ the Anchor said, looking at him in surprise. ‘Haven’t you already got loads of alcohol at home?’

  ‘Yes, but this is a present,’ Bäckström said. ‘An old colleague from National Crime who’s turning fifty. I’m seeing him this afternoon. He’s fond of malt whisky, so I thought I’d get him a bottle.’

  ‘Okay,’ Annika said. ‘No problem.’

  When he got out of the car by Systembolaget, he had taken care to leave his briefcase behind, and, if he knew the attack-dyke at all, she’d be going through its contents the moment she got a chance. Inside the shop he found a bottle of twelve-year-old malt whisky in a black presentation box. That ought to work, Bäckström thought, comparing it with the pictures his Forensics colleagues had taken of all the bottles on Eriksson’s mobile bar on the upstairs landing, just to make certain. Mind you, it was undoubtedly a great pity that an honest, hardworking police officer should have to donate a bottle of whisky costing several hundred kronor to Eriksson’s estate.

  ‘All done,’ Bäckström said as soon as he was back in the car again. ‘Right, let’s get going.’

  Then he picked up the black presentation box and put it inside his briefcase. He crumpled up the green plastic bag and left it on the floor in front of his seat. He could hardly make it any more obvious.

  ‘Expensive stuff. You’re a generous man, Bäckström,’ Anchor Carlsson declared. Quarter of an hour later she pulled up outside the house where Eriksson the lawyer had lived until just one week before.

  88

  ‘Okay,’ Bäckström said as soon as they were inside the hall on the ground floor. ‘Here’s what we do. You start with the cellar and I’ll take upstairs. Then we meet up back here and divide the rest.’

  ‘Just what I was going to suggest,’ Anchor Carlsson agreed. ‘How are we going to report this?’

  ‘Well, obviously, we’re going to have to report it,’ Bäckström said. ‘We make all the notes we need and, if we find any of the items we’re looking for, we’ll have to call in one of our colleagues in Forensics. Niemi and Hernandez can deal with that.’

  While Annika Carlsson disappeared down into the basement, he went upstairs, put his briefcase down on Eriksson’s desk, then did a quick check of the other rooms to make sure everything was as it should be. No cameras on, even though he’d taken care to switch off the alarm himself. No mysterious figures tucked away and able to watch him. Just to make absolutely sure, he even checked under Eriksson’s bed.

  Empty, Bäckström thought with a sigh of relief as he straightened up. Only then did he do what he had actually come for. He opened his briefcase, took out the black box containing the bottle of whisky and swapped it for the more than twice as heavy wooden box containing the most valuable musical box in the world, which he put down on the floor under the desk.

  As soon as the whisky was in position, he took out the Forensics pictures and went and stood in the position from which they had been taken. Perfect. Not even Peter Niemi and his magnifying glass would be able to see the slightest difference.

  Then he lifted his new acquisition on to the table and opened the dark wooden case. He took out the little figure with the red pointed hat, inspected it from every angle, then put it down on the desk. He found the key pretty much by accident. While he was carefully feeling the inside of the box, the bottom opened with a discreet click, and there it was. Gold and diamonds – thirty-two carats, according to GeGurra, who usually knew what he was talking about when it came to objects like the one he had in his hand.

  The music will have to wait, Bäckström thought. Then he replaced the key and put little Pinocchio back in the dark wooden box, before gently putting it inside his old brown briefcase. Welcome home, lad.

  ‘Nothing,’ Bäckström said sadly when he and Annika met up back in the hallway an hour or so later.

  ‘Same here,’ Annika said. ‘Mind you, it would have been a dereliction of duty not to do an extra check,’ she added, patting him consolingly on the arm.

  ‘There’s one thing that’s struck me,’ Annika said as they were sitting in the car on the way back to the police station.

  ‘I’m listening,’ Bäckström said.

  ‘I noticed that most of those icons aren’t framed. The majority of them are painted on wood, of course, but at least a couple were on canvas. And then I thought about that character our little taxi-driver almost ran over.’

  ‘Angel García Gomez,’ Bäckström said with a nod. This is getting better and better. He had already worked out where she was going with this.

  ‘Well, it’s obvious it was him,’ Annika Carlsson said. ‘I’ve thought that ever since I saw the photofit picture and, now that we’ve got his DNA from the terrace door, I’m convinced it’s him. He’s the one who killed both Eriksson and the dog.’

  ‘Not Eriksson,’ Bäckström said, shaking his head. ‘He’s got an alibi for when Eriksson was killed. When he was at that martial arts competition. But I’m fairly certain he’s the one who shows up at Eriksson’s later that night, smashes his skull in and cuts the dog’s throat. But his good friend Fredrik Åkare could very well have been there both when Eriksson was murdered and later on.’

  ‘When he was driving García Gomez,’ Annika nodded. ‘I buy that. How about this, then? Suppose García Gomez removed the painting from its frame, the one they missed the first time, rolled it up and tucked it inside his jacket. What do you think about that?’

  ‘A definite possibility,’ Bäckström agreed. ‘Obviously better than running around with a painting tucked under your arm in the middle of the night.’

  ‘What about the frame, though? The one the canvas was in. What did he do with that?’

  ‘Smashed it, and used the pieces to roll the painting around, probably,’ Bäckström said.

  ‘Yes, that’s what I think too,’ Annika said with feeling. ‘It would have been stupid of him to take the painting and leave the frame behind. That would even make someone like Alm wonder. A flashing red light if you find something like that at a crime scene. A broken picture frame but no picture.’

  ‘On a completely different matter,’ Bäckström said, ‘I was thinking about our witness. The little taxi-driver. I don’t suppose he’s shown up again?’

  ‘Afraid not,’ Annika said. ‘He seems to have vanished. I can’t help getting bad vibes when I think about him. Another thing that bothers me is that both Åkare and García Gomez seem to have gone underground. No trace of them either, but at least we’v
e got warrants out for them. We’ll just have to hope that nothing’s happened to our witness.’

  Who cares? Bäckström thought, but allowed himself to be content with a nod.

  89

  Bäckström’s weekend didn’t turn out the way his weekends usually did. To start with, he kept dashing to the door to make sure it was properly locked, until he pulled himself together. He made himself a proper tray of sandwiches, poured himself a cold beer and downed a stiff drink before he’d even sat down.

  Then he settled down at the kitchen table to eat and, after a couple more fortifying drinks and the usual refreshment in between them, he finally got himself back under control and managed to suppress the attack of crim’s paranoia that could evidently also afflict an honest police officer like him. Switching his phone off would have to do, and he spent the evening at home watching old Clint films which he’d downloaded from the internet. Memories of the days when his own wallet used to start whining at him within a week of payday. Times have changed, he thought and, when he eventually discovered the truth lurking at the bottom of his litre bottle of vodka, he fell asleep on the sofa.

  On Sunday he made a concerted effort to get his act together. He called Nadja at home and arranged to meet her at work. He ended up spending half the afternoon there while he told her what GeGurra had told him. Which wasn’t altogether straightforward, as he couldn’t say a word about little Pinocchio and his nose, even though his entire life seemed to revolve around him these days.

  Then he returned home. He had dinner at his local and, even though his Finnish waitress was exactly the same as usual, he couldn’t be bothered to listen to her.

  ‘I’m worried about you, Bäckström,’ she said, patting him on the shoulder. ‘You’re not coming down with something, are you?’

  ‘Feels like I might have picked something up,’ he lied, mostly as a way of changing the subject and giving him an excuse to leave.

  He went to bed as soon as he got home. It took him a while to get to sleep, and when he woke up it was only six o’clock in the morning. Two hours later he was at work and, compared to the way he had felt the day before, that actually felt like something of a liberation. Must be the money, Bäckström thought. The two hundred million that had been stuck in his head like a golden nail for the past twenty-four hours or so.

  V

  The ongoing investigation into the murder of Thomas Eriksson the lawyer

  90

  Bäckström began the Monday meeting of the investigative team with a short lecture. It was high time something happened. As everyone in the room knew, or ought to know, the chances of solving a murder case diminished drastically once a week had passed and, unless he had got his maths wrong, that moment had passed the previous evening. All he had so far was a whole lot of loose threads. An as yet unidentified silver Mercedes, a witness who had suddenly vanished, two suspects who appeared to have done the same, plus a post-mortem report which had been promised for a week now but still hadn’t arrived to help them with their investigation.

  ‘Give me some good news!’ he said, glaring at his colleagues.

  ‘Well, I’ve got something for you,’ Peter Niemi said, leafing through his papers.

  Just a quarter of an hour earlier, the National Forensics Lab had called him to say that they had more information about the DNA trace they had found in the blood taken from the door to Eriksson’s terrace which matched Angel García Gomez’s record in the database.

  ‘Along with García Gomez’s DNA, they’ve found traces of different DNA, from a dog,’ Niemi said. ‘Eriksson’s Rottweiler, which is pretty much everything we could have wished for. He may have an alibi for the time when Eriksson is thought to have been murdered but, as far as events later that night are concerned, I believe he killed the dog and smashed in the skull of its owner.’

  ‘Thank you very much,’ Bäckström said.

  ‘As far as the silver Mercedes is concerned, we still have approximately fifty vehicles outstanding,’ Nadja Högberg said. ‘I’m afraid it’s going to take a few more days.’

  ‘Okay,’ Bäckström said. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Our witness, Dosti, has been called for interview without the need for advance warning,’ Lisa Lamm said. ‘As soon as we locate him we can bring him straight in. And our two suspects, García Gomez and Åkare, have had arrest warrants issued against them in their absence. After what Peter has just said, I’m open to the idea of asking for them to be held in custody. If we feel like putting out an international alert for them, I mean.’

  ‘Good, let’s do that,’ Bäckström said. ‘Before sundown, I want those two behind bars.’ Good line, he thought. Before sundown, then he could ride off into the sunset. On to the next town where the bad guys thought they were in control.

  ‘On that point we’re in complete agreement,’ Lisa Lamm said, smiling warmly at him. ‘Regarding the missing post-mortem results, I spoke to our medical officer before coming to this meeting.’

  ‘What does he say?’ Annika Carlsson asked. ‘Are we getting it for Christmas, or what?’

  ‘By the middle of this week at the latest, according to what he told me an hour ago. He’s waiting for his colleague’s report. Until then we’ll just have to make do with his preliminary evaluation. If you want to know what I think, I reckon there’s something worrying him and his colleague. Seriously worrying them.’

  ‘What the hell are they playing at?’ Annika Carlsson said, unable to hide her irritation.

  ‘Paddling round in snot,’ Bäckström said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘If no one has anything else to say, I’ve got a few things I’d like to add.

  ‘You can’t make an omelette without cracking eggs,’ he went on. ‘And it’s about time we started cracking a few eggs. I thought I might ask Nadja to explain what I mean. But, first, we need a quick break to stretch our legs,’ he concluded, and stood up.

  91

  The police leg-stretcher overran, as usual, and the most hardened smoker sneaked back into the room sixteen minutes later with a guilty smile on her lips. Bäckström gave her the evil eye and tapped his watch with his forefinger to underline his message.

  ‘I received a tip-off from one of my informants over the weekend, which I have asked Nadja to help me look into. If we’re lucky, it might give us the motive for why Eriksson was beaten to death. Do you remember the case of that baron, von Comer, who was reported to have been beaten up outside the Drottningholm Palace? The anonymous report that was handed in at reception? Jenny looked into it for us a fortnight ago. The assault was supposed to have taken place on the evening of Sunday, 19 May.’

  ‘The bloke who denied he’d been beaten up?’ Annika Carlsson said, glowering sullenly at her younger female colleague Jenny Rogersson.

  ‘That’s the one,’ Bäckström said. ‘The same informant got in touch again before the weekend, to say that the person who beat up the baron was, in fact, Eriksson. Our anonymous witness recognized Eriksson from the pictures that were published in the press after he was murdered. You can get the details from Jenny.’

  ‘So why did he deny it, then? Getting beaten up, I mean?’ Stigson asked.

  ‘I’m getting to that,’ Bäckström said. ‘According to my source, the whole business is connected to various acts of skulduggery concerning the sale of some works of art. Eriksson was commissioned by a client to sell a number of paintings and employed von Comer to take care of the practical details. The baron tried to trick Eriksson, and Eriksson found out what he was up to. He beat him up, took back the paintings and the money he had been conned out of. Nine hundred and sixty-two thousand kronor, according to my source, which is undeniably an interesting coincidence, considering that bundle of notes we found in Eriksson’s desk. And the removal boxes that Eriksson carried into the house before the weekend he was murdered, and which the perpetrators carried out again a couple of days later.’

  ‘You mean von Comer took the paintings back again?’ Lisa Lamm said, nodding enthusiastical
ly. ‘So he took Åkare and one of his associates with him to save getting beaten up again. And then García Gomez enters the story later on, when they pay another visit to the crime scene. Because they forgot something the first time they were there.’

  ‘It’s not an entirely improbable hypothesis,’ Bäckström said.

  ‘Hang on a moment,’ Alm said from the other end of the long table. ‘Why leave so much money behind? A million – surely they should have taken that with them?’

  ‘The simplest explanation is probably that they forgot about it in the general confusion once Eriksson started shooting all over the place and then got killed,’ Bäckström replied. Suck on that, he thought. ‘And the dog had kicked off as well by then. There was shooting, shouting and screaming, and the suspicion that someone might call us and that we, just for once, might actually show up certainly can’t be ruled out.

  ‘So, to answer your question,’ Bäckström went on, giving Alm the evil eye, ‘in situations like that, people sometimes forget one or two things.’

  ‘I hear what you’re saying, Bäckström,’ Alm said, ‘but I’m still having trouble believing that a man like our baron would have anything to do with a pair like Fredrik Åkare and Angel García Gomez. A great deal of trouble, actually.’

  ‘Worse things have happened! Anyway, I had no idea that you were acquainted with von Comer,’ Bäckström said, glaring at Alm.

  ‘What do you think, Nadja?’ Anchor Carlsson interrupted. They’re like little kids, she thought.

  ‘I agree with Bäckström, for three main reasons, really,’ Nadja Högberg said.

  Three reasons, according to Nadja. Firstly, the hypothesis explained the cryptic note that Eriksson had made on his computer a week before he was murdered.

  ‘From what Eriksson wrote on his computer, Vom Coma – that’s what he calls von Comer; a little joke, I suppose – tried to trick him out of almost a million kronor. The direct quote reads as follows: “Vom Coma has obviously tried to do me out of almost a million.” End of quote. That’s the first reason.’