“You see, I have a small problem I think you can help me with,” said GeGurra, sipping his dry martini carefully.
“I’m listening,” said Bäckström.
GeGurra had an old customer. For many years now he’d also been a good friend. It was often that way among friends of art. Great art collector, significant patron, living abroad for many years. A few months ago he’d had a break-in in his apartment in Stockholm. An old Dutchman that wasn’t exactly free had been stolen. True, it was insured for its full value, but what did that help for a true art lover who didn’t care the least about money and besides had more of that commodity than all his spoiled heirs could imagine running through for several generations to come. He wanted his painting back. It was no more difficult than that, and now he’d asked GeGurra for advice.
“What do you think, Bäckström?” said GeGurra. “What do you think are the chances that you and your new associates will succeed in clearing this up and making sure he gets his painting back?”
“You probably shouldn’t ask me that,” said Bäckström. “It’s not my case.”
“Sad, very sad,” said GeGurra and sighed. “You don’t think your associates will put this to rights?”
“Forget it,” said Bäckström. If you don’t believe me I can show you little Wiijnbladh, he thought.
“You wouldn’t be able to check on how it’s going?” asked GeGurra.
“It’s not as easy as you think,” said Bäckström. “There’s a fucking lot of secrecy these days. You’d almost think you were working for a secret sect. If it’s not your case, then you’re screwed if you try to ferret anything out. Back in the day the insurance companies would buy back stolen paintings, but then a lot of fucking teetotalers and clean-living fools came in who made short work of that solution. As soon as some helpful bastard shows up with the painting, he lands right in jail. He can just forget about the reward money, and the insurance companies don’t want to hear about such things anymore.”
“My good friend has a Swiss insurance company,” said GeGurra. “I can assure you that they have a completely different and much more practical attitude.”
“Sure,” said Bäckström. “Tell that to the one who’s going to turn in the goods. He can only dream about the dough while he’s serving four years in the can for receiving stolen goods.”
“Think about it,” said GeGurra. “While we have a bit to eat and a little schnapps so we’ll think better.”
“What’s in it for me?” said Bäckström. Just as well to have it said, he thought.
“In my world no one goes empty-handed,” said GeGurra with a well-tailored shrug of his shoulders. “So what do you say we start with gravlax?”
The following day Bäckström took the opportunity as soon as Wiijnbladh stumbled out the door at three o’clock. All was calm and quiet in the corridor. Not a single soul around because it was both payday and Friday and high time for all hardworking constables to visit the state liquor store before they went home to the little wife and let the struggle against criminality take a weekend rest.
Bäckström started by turning over Wiijnbladh’s desk pad, and the only problem was that he’d taped the reminder slip upside down. Eight digits and eight letters written in shaky handwriting. As a personal code he had chosen Cerberus, and he was probably not the only one in the building to do so. Wonder if he’s thinking about buying new false teeth, thought Bäckström as he entered the codes in his flash drive.
Then he logged in and printed out a copy of the investigation of the art theft on Strandvägen. Put it in his pocket, took a bracing walk from his workplace to GeGurra’s residence on Norr Mälarstrand, and dropped it in his mail slot.
The following week he and GeGurra had a discreet meeting with a Swiss attorney and an English-speaking representative of the Swiss insurance company. It was clear that Bäckström would be able to arrange the retrieval of the painting if he could do as real policemen had always done. No problem, according to the insurance executive and the attorney. One wish remained on Bäckström’s side.
“This meeting never took place and you gentlemen and I have never met,” said Bäckström.
No problem with that either, and what the hell do I do now? thought Bäckström when he returned to work an hour afterward.
One week later the matter resolved itself. Even though it wasn’t his case, Inspector Evert Bäckström received an anonymous tip by phone. A polite young man who did not want to say his name announced that there was a recently stolen car parked on Polhemsgatan outside the entryway to the large police building. Only a hundred yards from Bäckström’s own desk, although he didn’t say that. In the trunk was a stolen painting, and so the police wouldn’t have to waste time, the vehicle had been left unlocked.
Bäckström went to his immediate boss and briefly explained what the whole thing was about. He said that if his boss so desired he would obviously follow up on the phone call and take a look.
“What I still don’t get is why the informant called you, Bäckström,” the chief hissed ten minutes later when they opened the back of the stolen car and saw the just-recovered painting by Bruegel the Younger. “This is not really your investigation.”
“I guess he wanted to talk with a real policeman,” said Bäckström, shrugging his fat shoulders. There’s something for you to suck on, you little bureaucrat, he thought.
One week later Bäckström’s boss gave him a new case to sink his teeth into. The department at the Swedish Economic Crime Authority that dealt with environmental crimes needed help tracing the original owner of fifty-some barrels of apparently toxic waste that the police in Nacka had found in an abandoned factory.
How do you tell such things apart? thought Bäckström. They’re all the same anyway, he thought. A few days earlier he’d met GeGurra, who thanked him for the help, treated him to dinner, and delivered a plain brown envelope without return address plus a promise that more would be coming, peu à peu, as custom dictated, between discreet friends.
You really are a cunning little devil, GeGurra, thought Bäckström when after a good meal he returned to his pleasant bachelor pad on Inedalsgatan, only a stone’s throw from the large police building. Even a half-fairy like Wiijnbladh had to make his contribution without having a clue about it.
Maybe I should buy new false teeth for the little poisoner, thought Bäckström as he mixed an ample evening toddy. The wooden kind, he thought.
Chief Inspector Evert Bäckström, legendary murder investigator in forced exile at the police lost-and-found warehouse. Gustaf G:son Henning, successful art dealer and known from TV. Inspector Göran Wiijnbladh, the police’s own knight of the mournful guise. Three human fates that had turned out differently, to be sure, but that in less than a year would be joined in a way none of them could have foreseen.
33
Almost a year later, on Thursday, August 16, Bäckström was sitting at home in his apartment on Inedalsgatan, having a quiet evening highball. Fruit soda and Estonian vodka he’d bought from a fellow officer who worked with the coast guard and had a few contacts on the other side. Despite the monthly contribution from the good Henning, there had been many holes to fill. Since he’d acquired his new plasma TV with the giant screen, malt whiskey, at least for a time, had to be replaced by simpler fare. I hope it is a temporary problem, thought Bäckström, sighing contentedly. Turning on his new acquisition he almost choked on his drink.
Lapp bastard, he thought, staring at Johansson on the screen. Sitting there telling lies in that drawling Norrland way. Just like all the other Lapp bastards in a coma from too many dumplings.
That put an end to his evening repose. Even though he changed channels almost immediately and even though he tried to extinguish the smoldering fire inside him with another couple of substantial bracers. He didn’t even have the energy to check his e-mail to see if anything new had shown up from that crazy female who preferred “real men in uniform” with “fixed routines and clear orientation” but who at the same time were not unfamiliar with “boundary-crossing activities.”