“A close friend,” said Wiijnbladh, who already had something damp in the corner of his eye. “So sadly lost in a tragic accident. Great art collector. Had a most excellent collection of contemporary Swedish paintings.”
“But how did he have the money for that?” asked Bäckström. “I mean, on a regular police salary you don’t have the cash for a few Zorns, exactly.” At the most a porno photo or two that you can take with your official cell phone, he thought.
“Very well off, very well off,” said Wiijnbladh, twisting his skinny neck. “Very rich parents. Waltin must have been good for many millions in his prime.”
“You don’t say,” said Bäckström. “It was a common interest in art that brought you together?”
Or was it that red-haired sow you were married to, who introduced him as her cousin from the country? he thought.
“That and a lot of other things,” said Wiijnbladh, nodding mournfully.
“So what were those other things,” said Bäckström. Your old lady, he thought.
“The former police superintendent was a high-ranking chief in the closed operation, as I’m sure you know.”
“Yes,” said Bäckström with a bewildered expression. So what? SePo doesn’t investigate poisonings, he thought.
“On a few occasions I had the opportunity to help him and the closed operation in their important work,” said Wiijnbladh, who suddenly looked as proud as a person can who has almost no teeth of his own left.
Jeez Louise, thought Bäckström. Did you mix thallium into the beet soup at the Russian embassy or what?
“Sounds extremely exciting,” said Bäckström. “Do tell.”
“Can’t say anything,” said Wiijnbladh. “Secrecy. Security of the realm, as I’m sure you understand.”
“You can say something anyway,” Bäckström persisted. “Of course it will stay in this room.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Wiijnbladh plaintively. “Sorry, sorry, Bäckström, my lips are sealed by Swedish law. But I can say this much anyway, that I received a formal thanks from the highest leadership of SePo for my efforts. If you were to doubt what I’m saying, I mean.”
Wonder just what the poisoner Wiijnbladh could have helped leather boy Waltin with? thought Bäckström when he returned to his office. Other than the beet soup, of course. Just about time to go home, by the way, he thought. The time was approaching the magic stroke of three, and the day’s toil and moil had long been over for a simple wage slave in the service of the police administration.
After an hour Anna Holt got an answer from the bureau’s Central Intelligence Service. There was a case that tallied with her specification. A so-called extended suicide that occurred in Spånga on March 27, 1983. Less than three years before the murder of the prime minister.
The perpetrator was a painter. A widower, forty-five years old, hunter and sports shooter with a license for several weapons. He shot his sixteen-year-old daughter and her twenty-three-year-old boyfriend at home in his house in Spånga. After that he shot himself. The weapon had been confiscated. The crime was solved, but for natural reasons no indictment was ever brought.
Nothing more than that emerged from the information stored in the bureau’s computer system. The complete investigation would be found in the Stockholm police archives. The weapon ought to be at the tech squad in Stockholm. Because those kinds of weapons usually wound up there, according to the analyst who had searched out the report.
That can’t be right. Not if we confiscated the weapon in 1983. You can’t find fault with the little fatso’s imagination, thought Holt, looking at the clock. It’ll have to be tomorrow, she thought.
44
For the third time in a month Lewin pulled out his old boxes from the winter and spring of 1986. The same boxes that contained every random piece of evidence that might be-at best-of doubtful value to the police.
On Saturday the first of March at 9:15 a.m., Police Superintendent Claes Waltin got a parking ticket on Smedsbacksgatan up at Gärdet. The car was his own 1986 BMW 535.
When he got the ticket it had not been parked there very long. According to the meter maid Lewin spoke with, she and her associate followed a special Saturday routine. They made two rounds in the area. First they made note of illegally parked cars, and when they returned between fifteen minutes and half an hour later for the second round, cars were ticketed if they were still there. Simple and practical, considering the grace period of at least ten minutes this gave the owners.
Considering that Waltin was parked in a spot requiring a disability permit, it couldn’t have been there during the first round. Cars parked like that were ticketed immediately. Based on the address and the time of the ticket, it could hardly have been parked illegally before 8:45. All according to the meter maid, who was quite understanding.
Lewin bought her line of reasoning. It was logical and had the stamp of probability, and there was little that argued for this parking violation having the slightest relevance to a murder that had been committed ten hours earlier and several miles away. Nevertheless he had still sent a written inquiry on Monday, March 24, 1986, to his colleagues at SePo who were responsible for the police track.
The written response had not arrived for over a month. It was dated Tuesday, April 29, 1986, signed by an inspector with the secret police, brief in its wording and surrounded in certified secrecy. “The vehicle in question has been used on duty in the supervision of the object of protection who was staying at one of our addresses in the area.”
In all likelihood both of these letters should be in one of Mattei’s binders, Lewin thought.
“Have you found it?” asked Lewin an hour later when Mattei returned to their office with a sizeable bundle of computer lists under her arm.
“No,” said Mattei. “Neither your inquiry nor their answer. There aren’t even any notes in the ongoing registration.”
“So how do you interpret that?” asked Lewin. “I mean, you’re the one who’s the computer nerd among us ordinary mortals.”
“Nice of you,” said Mattei. “Because I have a hard time believing you’re the one who’s been careless, I also think they received your question. Then for some reason they didn’t register it. Sent a reply a month later with one of their own serial numbers, which to be sure is in their registry, but which refers to a completely different case and a completely different file.”
“So what is this about?”
“I’ve managed to trace that file. It’s in the case files and concerns an inquiry to Ryhov’s mental hospital about one of their patients who tipped off SePo about a police officer in Gothenburg who is supposed to have murdered Olof Palme. Moreover, that lead file was already written off in May 1986.”
“But-”
“It doesn’t have the slightest to do with your case,” Mattei interrupted. “If I were Johansson I’d say it’s one of the most phenomenally wacko tips I’ve seen.”
“Extremely peculiar,” said Lewin. “So what do you think happened?”
“I think that someone set aside your question to them without registering it. Then the same someone presumably waited a month and then sent a reply with a serial number that references something else. If you had received a reply without a serial number, I’m sure you would have reacted.”
“And the colleague at SePo who signed my answer? Inspector Jan Andersson. Could Waltin have persuaded him to do something like that?”
“Sounds highly unlikely that he would have succeeded in persuading someone to reply to a letter that doesn’t seem to exist and supply the response with a serial number that refers to a completely different matter besides.”
“Andersson, our colleague Jan Andersson. True, it’s been over twenty years, but-”