…
When they came back to the precinct the day before St. Lucia’s Day, old Jack Daniels took Bäckström aside and asked him if he couldn’t arrange the practical details around the Lucia celebration so it wouldn’t be so damn expensive. Bäckström understood exactly what he meant, and even though it was at the last minute he succeeded in getting hold of his contact at the coast guard, who’d gotten a meeting with his own contact, who in turn had produced a whole case of mixed goodies at a reasonable price.
“No need to pay for the whole damn geriatric system because you want to have a drink,” said Jack Daniels contentedly when Bäckström returned with his booty after a well-executed assignment.
Then they celebrated Lucia according to good old traditions, and Bäckström didn’t even need to slave at the after-hours unit over the weekend. Danielsson, that decent old drunk, had given him a special assignment and written out all the overtime forms required so he would be able to rest his weary head and take the weekend off with a good conscience.
Monday didn’t start off badly either. He’d hardly managed to stick his foot in the precinct door before one of the younger talents came rushing in all out of breath to say that there’d been a double murder out in Bromma that demanded Bäckström’s immediate professional assistance.
Unfortunately it wasn’t as good as it sounded. Despite the address it was an ordinary gook murder. A crazy Iranian who had shot his wife and young daughter. True, the wife was Swedish, but what the hell could she expect when she’d gotten married to someone like that and told the poor bastard that she wanted a divorce besides? How fucking stupid can you be? thought Bäckström.
When the camel driver was done with the old lady and the kid he’d clearly tried to do himself in too, but that hadn’t gone too well. As so often with those types, his courage had failed him as soon as it concerned his own well-being. First he’d tried to shoot himself in the head, but naturally he’d missed and only parted his hair, and when the uniformed police had gotten there, he was sitting out in the kitchen whittling his wrists with an old bread knife. In other words, a completely ordinary gook murder, and the most shocking thing was perhaps that the poor bastard had a license for two weapons, a moose rifle and a shotgun. Clearly he’d taken the hunting test, and those morons at the licensing unit had licensed the hunting rifles to him. How the hell could a bastard like that get a license to hunt? In Sweden besides, thought Bäckström.
The rest was pure routine. Fortunately he’d got hold of that little fairy Wiijnbladh in tech, so the actual crime-scene investigation had gone quickly enough, and he’d gladly turned over the gook to a younger colleague who might need a few easy cases to practice on before things got serious, and it was then of course that the whole thing had gone to hell. As always when the real pro isn’t nearby. His younger colleague simply dropped the ball, and the good doctor had of course been smart enough to take the opportunity to stuff so many pills into the poor bastard that he hadn’t been able to talk. How fucking stupid can you be? thought Bäckström. And now his colleague had the chance of a lifetime to squeeze a proper confession out of the guy as he was lying there in intensive care with his eyes crossed and tubes in both arms.
“Have you thought about starting at the City Mission, lad?” said Bäckström, fixing his eyes on the little moron from hell when he came back from the hospital and stood in Bäckström’s office, whining that he couldn’t cope with his job.
The good doctor was clearly one of those intrepid citizens who took themselves too seriously. He’d admitted the murderer to the psychiatric unit, and the guy was simply lying there keeping his mouth shut. “Deeply depressed, beyond communication, and with apparent risk of ending up in a long-term psychotic state,” according to the fax that His Highness sent over to the squad as an answer to Bäckström’s own friendly question of whether he couldn’t be allowed to talk with the poor bastard. They intend to snatch the gook away from me, those bastards, and then they’ll release him for Easter as usual and he’ll suddenly be free as a bird and healthy as a horse, thought Bäckström, who’d been there before. But we’ll see the hell about that, he thought, and went in to Jack Daniels to procure a little extra help.
Unfortunately it appeared as though he might have chosen a better occasion. A hangover had clearly caught up with his honored boss, which no doubt only proved that not even a drunk like him could cope with partying the way they usually did before Christmas. Jack Daniels had gone completely nuts and Bäckström got the whole blame, despite the fact that he was innocent. Any more special assignments before Christmas were out of the question. And so were a large number of other things, if Bäckström, who came back from the hospital without a confession, understood the matter correctly.
“How fucking stupid can you be?” bellowed Jack Daniels in his sympathetic way, pounding his fist on the desk.
So Bäckström had to make the best of a bad job, gather together his bag and baggage, and drive himself back up to the hospital and question the gook. Late in the evening, besides, so he could be certain that that damn doctor was sitting at home celebrating his victory over justice along with the rest of the red-wine leftists. Although there you shit in your pants, thought Bäckström while he rigged up his tape recorder next to the bed. The gook himself was playing the nut-house game, looking at the ceiling with empty brown, tear-filled eyes and hands folded on the bedcover as if he really didn’t have anything to do with the matter but was just a completely ordinary psycho case in a large pile of innocent people.
This will be fun, thought Bäckström delightedly. He switched on the tape recorder, did the usual introductory tirades, and looked gently at the gook while he held out the photo he’d brought with him.
“I understand that you’re not feeling well,” said Bäckström amiably, patting him on the shoulder. “But I think you’re going to feel a lot better if you unburden your heart.”
It wasn’t a bad photo, in color, of course, and with good sharpness in all details, and it functioned completely perfectly. The daughter was two years old and had clearly been asleep when little gook-papa had come in to say goodnight for good. She’d had on white pajamas with big Mickey Mouses on them, and according to another photo, which Bäckström had seen in an album at home at the crime scene, she’d been really cute like all those gook kids always were.
Now, on the other hand, she didn’t look funny. Her dear father had clearly stuck the barrel of his moose rifle in through the slats of her little bed, set the muzzle against the base of her skull, and pulled the trigger. The bullet had gone diagonally down through the body and out through her belly. On its way it had taken with it the entire package of the small intestine, which was lying like a neat, pale pink ball outside her pajamas, covering at least one and a half Mickey Mouses. It was not a bad photo, as stated, and the gook only needed to cast one brown goat eye on it in order to reconnect sufficiently for the damn doctor to be up on charges for his crazy diagnosis.
His mouth started going like a sewing-machine needle while the tears and sweat sprayed off him. Broken Swedish, of course. For long intervals he’d been completely incomprehensible, and for awhile he of course tried to put the blame on his wife, but Bäckström nonetheless got it done, although he had to toil like a galley slave with the tape recorder when not being forced to keep his interrogation object in bed where he should be if he was ever going to get healthy. It only took an hour to put all the pieces in place. Then the nurse was allowed to come in and stick a sturdy injection into the poor bastard as a reward, and before Bäckström left he took the opportunity to give him a few parting words.