“You think you can find the weapon and you can also solve the murder?”
“You betcha,” said Bäckström. “I have good leads on the weapon, and I’ve already found two of those involved. There are more, if you ask me.”
“I’m assuming that I can be anonymous,” said GeGurra. “I have to be kept out of it, as you understand. This sort of thing is not good for business.”
“Of course,” said Bäckström. And that part about fifty-fifty you can just forget, he thought.
A player and an operator, thought Bäckström as he sat in the taxi on his way back to work. Although not like me, he thought. A little too gay and a little too nervous when push comes to shove.
Thursday pea soup with extra pork and sausage, plenty of mustard, a couple shots and a large pilsner to get the system going. A few pancakes with whipped cream and jam on top and a real marvel for the little craw that was already rumbling like a blast furnace as he sank down behind his desk. Perhaps I ought to open the door so all the little thing finders out in the corridor get a chance to enjoy a really good lunch, thought Bäckström, who felt that a major fart was on its way.
He test fired carefully but it wouldn’t come out until his own little half-boss suddenly knocked and came into his office. Now, you little binder carrier, thought Bäckström. Giving him the evil eye, he sank down in the chair, eased up on his left buttock, and tightened his well-trained diaphragm. A sizeable barrel and not an ordinary lousy six pack like all the gym queers.
A completely formidable and juicy one. One of Bäckström’s best ever. A real orchestra finale. First a couple of noisy blasts with ass bassoon, a several-seconds-long solo on bowel trumpet, then a few concluding toots on anal flute.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” asked Bäckström, flexing lightly with both cheeks. There, you got a little something good to suck on, he thought. The little bastard looked ready to faint, and apparently he wanted to deliver a letter.
“Set it with the rest of the mildew,” said Bäckström, pointing at his overflowing desk. “I’ll get to it when I have time.” Damn what a hurry he was in, he thought.
The letter was from the Stockholm police department’s own female police chief. Just as skinny as that attack dyke Holt. Just as crazy as Holt, and certainly a sister in the same association of fairy and dyke constables.
Bäckström had received a summons to a gender sensitivity course that would start on Monday morning at nine o’clock and last the whole week. Police officials of the highest rank had noticed that Bäckström apparently lacked this mandatory feature in police training and intended to remedy the matter immediately. Accommodations were at some camp up in Roslagen. Not a request, but an order.
Now damn it this is war, thought Bäckström, tensing all his muscles from his navel on down.
50
After an hour and a half Johansson called on Holt’s cell.
“I’m sitting in a line of cars up on Essingeleden,” Holt explained. “See you in fifteen.”
“I thought there were blue lights on that car,” Johansson whined.
Most often cheerful, far too often furious. Surly sometimes, never whiny. Johansson must be worried about something, thought Holt with surprise.
If that’s the way it was, there was no trace of it twenty minutes later as she stepped into his conference room. He was entertaining himself with Lewin and Mattei, and there were only happy faces around the table.
“Coffee,” said Johansson, nodding at the tray. “I remember those times I was out in the field and drove like a car thief. Then I would always be in the mood for coffee afterward.”
“I thought it was Jarnebring who always drove,” said Holt.
“Bragging,” said Johansson. “Can you give us a quick summary, Anna?”
Curious twists of fortune with a parking ticket. A scrapped revolver and a vanished firing report. Seventy-five percent probability that they had found something that would trigger an earthquake, and not just in the neighborhood where they were sitting. It was high time to turn this over to the chief prosecutor in Stockholm and the murder investigation that the government had appointed.
“One can certainly get the impression that Waltin ran around and cleaned up after himself, and with that this is not our area any longer,” Holt concluded, supporting herself on the table and jutting her jaw for emphasis.
“We’ll get to that later,” said Johansson. “Now we’ll play devil’s advocate for a while. You start, Lisa.”
That Waltin was involved was still far from proven, according to Mattei. On the other hand it was quite certain that he had died fifteen years ago. In a drowning accident on Mallorca. Dead for a long time, and the worst conceivable alternative for anyone who was searching for a perpetrator in a murder investigation.
That he would have shot the prime minister seemed completely unlikely. In any event, the witnesses’ descriptions of the perpetrator did not match Waltin.
“Five foot nine. Barely taller than the victim. Slender and delicately built. Doesn’t match,” said Mattei. “Not with the witnesses and even less with the shot angle that the technicians describe. That points with high probability to a perpetrator who is at least six feet tall. Probably taller.”
But there certainly were some strange circumstances. That was not to say that Waltin had to be behind them. Previous experience showed that even police officers who did not have the slightest thing to hide could clean away papers and technical evidence. Through ordinary carelessness, if nothing else?
“I think nonetheless that the vicissitudes of this parking ticket do point in a definite direction,” Holt argued.
“Sure,” said Mattei. “Or else there’s just some kind of silly human explanation. Like that married man who preferred to remain in jail suspected of having killed his wife than admit that he was with her girlfriend when someone else murdered his wife.”
“I’ve actually had one just like that,” Johansson observed.
A series of strange circumstances. Particulars that didn’t even work as indices. Much less a chain of indices that could link Waltin to the vanished weapon, and the vanished weapon to a perpetrator who could be linked to Waltin, in order to finally link them both to the murder of a Swedish prime minister.
“Seventy-five percent probability that our bullet comes from the murder weapon. That’s what the whole thing boils down to,” said Mattei. “That’s not enough in court. Far from it,” she added.
“Take this about the weapon,” she continued. “A fundamental thought in the whole line of reasoning seems to be that someone, probably Waltin, is supposed to have come across a revolver from the tech squad in Stockholm. How could he do that? A high-ranking police chief at the secret police who was also an attorney. Who would someone like that have contact with at the tech squad at the Stockholm police?” Mattei looked questioningly at Holt.
“Wiijnbladh,” said Holt. “It’s alleged that Waltin knew our colleague Wiijnbladh, who was then working at the tech squad, and that he possibly could have come across the weapon through him.”
“Excuse me,” said Johansson. “Are we talking about that nutcase who tried to poison his wife?”
“Yes,” said Holt.
“So how do we know that?” asked Johansson.
“According to Bäckström,” said Holt and sighed.
“Perhaps we ought to attach Bäckström to our little group,” said Johansson. “I’m listening,” he said, nodding encouragingly.
“Sounds like Bäckström,” Johansson observed five minutes later. “I’m really looking forward to seeing that medal that Wiijnbladh is supposed to have got from Waltin.”