“I’m certain that you’re going to feel much better now that you’ve spoken up,” said Bäckström kindly, patting him on the arm and smiling mournfully toward the nurse. “Tsk, tsk, tsk, it’s too bad about some people.”
It was clearly strong stuff she’d poked into him, for when Bäckström left he was just lying there staring at the ceiling again. Just like he’d done an hour earlier.
…
But ingratitude is the world’s reward. The following day Jack Daniels came into Bäckström’s office and raged and was not the least bit grateful. The gook had evidently taken his own life during the night after Bäckström’s visit, despite the fact that he’d been given all the chances in the world to relieve his inner pressure. So it turned out to be the after-hours unit anyway, and considering how his finances looked after the most recent partying he didn’t have any choice other than to slave over both Christmas and New Year’s. What a fucking world, thought Bäckström gloomily. What fucking people there are and what fucking lives they live.
Wiijnbladh had a lot to do, chairman of the party committee that he was, and when he was finally starting to put all the details in order, that fat loudmouth Bäckström in homicide called and nagged that he needed help with a double murder. Nice as he was he naturally joined in, despite the fact that he had more important things on the program. This was a tragic family affair. Two spouses had quarreled, the man had clearly met a new woman and wanted to separate, and in her agitated and deranged condition the wife had taken his moose rifle and gone upstairs where she first shot their little daughter and then herself. Normally it was the other way around, i.e., it was the husband who shot the wife and children, but Wiijnbladh thought that the trace evidence spoke clearly, even if Bäckström refused to listen to that version. And as he neither had the time nor the inclination he settled for finishing his own business, and then he returned to his real assignment, organizing the celebration of the boss’s sixtieth birthday.
The boss, whose name was Holger Blenke, was something of a legend within criminal investigation. To start with he’d been a cadre commander in the cavalry-that was at the end of the Second World War-but as soon as the war was over he’d applied to the police department. Had to patrol his way up like everyone else to eventually end up in the tech squad, because he was a handy fellow who not only had a good way with horses but generally liked to fiddle around with things.
Blenke had already been around during the old boss’s time, when the technical squad was established; it was with him that Blenke had earned his spurs. You might well say that it was the old boss who’d broken ground and after that it was Blenke who had administered the forensic fields that the old boss had plowed up, thought Wiijnbladh, hurrying to put this well-thought-out formulation down on paper. In the midst of everything else, of course, he was to make the speech in honor of the boss. Unfortunately it hadn’t gone so well for the old boss in the autumn of his years. Instead most indications were that in a drunken delusion he had beaten his oldest son to death in connection with a garden-variety apartment break-in, but because Blenke had been in charge of the crime-scene investigation, it had nonetheless finally been resolved for the best. The case had been written off as an accident, and if nothing else the efforts Blenke had made then indicated his qualifications to be the old boss’s obvious successor. But to bring up such unpleasant details in a birthday speech was of course completely out of the question, and Wiijnbladh had decided early on to stick to the more general and all-embracing features of the history of the squad when the time came. That was still the most interesting, while the other things were just the usual police-station gossip, thought Wiijnbladh.
The work of planning his big day had unfortunately not proceeded without friction. Differing ideas and conflicting desires had demanded their tribute of compromises in matters both high and low, and at times Wiijnbladh had to mobilize all the diplomatic ability he was capable of in order for anything to get done. First they’d argued about the present for which they were going to collect money. Olsson, who never missed a chance to make himself seem important, had suggested that a travel stipend should be established in the boss’s honor, but considering the relevant amounts the whole idea was ridiculous to start with. Including a short stay, the money would hardly be enough to take you round trip to Växjö or Hudiksvall, quite apart from the question of what exactly you might be able to pick up in terms of knowledge of criminal investigation in such places.
Instead Wiijnbladh had underscored that in a context like this it must obviously be a personal gift, and the only natural thing was to proceed from the boss’s personal interests and hobbies. That was why they had finally decided to buy a chain saw, for the boss had a little summer place out on Muskö south of the city, and his major free-time interest was felling trees on his property.
After this they’d gone over to planning the party itself, and that was when things had gone seriously wrong within the committee. First Olsson, who was always the same, had developed an extremely peculiar idea that amounted to devoting the whole day to lectures and seminars where various problems and methods of criminal investigation were elucidated, but an otherwise united party committee had fortunately voted him down at once, even if one or two-considering the context-had perhaps not expressed themselves so well.
“The Chimney Sweep doesn’t give a damn about such novelties” was how one of the really old foxes on the squad summed it up.
Chimney Sweep was the boss’s nickname, even if it wasn’t what you called him when he was listening, and the reason he’d gotten this nickname was that he had always been a warm adherent of the classic old technique of searching for fingerprints with the help of brush and coal powder. Fingerprints in particular were Blenke’s great professional passion. The one time he could get really engaged and worked up was when he got onto the subject of what he called the Great Betrayal. As early as the beginning of the century, and throughout the Western world, apparently, the technique of using coal powder had been abandoned in favor of various other mysterious powders, liquids, light rays, or even gases that reacted chemically with the prints you were seeking, and which were completely incomprehensible to regular, normally constituted people.
“Gas me here, gas me there, the only gas we policemen need is tear gas,” as Blenke himself had so pointedly concluded the discussion when the question had been on the agenda during a morning meeting at the squad.
And as always, of course, it was that loser Olsson-Doctor Olsson, as his colleagues called him, even though he’d probably only gone to elementary school like all the others-who recommended that perhaps one ought to take a closer look at these new methods. Who was going to do that, since all the books were in foreign languages? Olsson seemed to have good contacts, in any case, as was shown most recently, when the ombudsman’s office had courted him despite his miserable efforts in connection with the murders of those three Turkish narcotics dealers.
But clearly it had been that careerist Johansson, who was head of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, who had chosen to write an amazingly lax statement that the ombudsman’s office had obviously accepted.
The whole thing was inexplicable, thought Wiijnbladh. What interest could a bigwig like Johansson, known for stepping over colleagues’ bodies if needed, have in supporting a lightweight like Olsson? Probably it was just an expression of the general arrogance and laziness that characterized people like Johansson, the Butcher from Ådalen, as certain members of the uniformed police called him. Personally Wiijnbladh had only met one leader within the corps who possessed the moral stature, the knowledge, and the capacity for practical action that one ought to have the right to demand of every person at that level. Police Superintendent Claes Waltin with SePo, thought Wiijnbladh with warmth. A man who had also personally sought him out to ask for advice on various technical questions of interest to the closed operation.