There was a very personal explanation for this. The previous day, the staff medical officer of the Stockholm Police had made him promise to make changes in his private life and had listed the medicinal alternatives that — if Bäckström carried on being Bäckström — had scared the life out of even this particular patient. And this had at least led to a sober evening and a sleepless night, after which Bäckström had decided to walk to his new job in the crime unit of the Western District.
An endless road to Calvary, some four kilometers long. Under a merciless sun, the whole way from his cozy abode on Inedalsgatan on Kungsholmen, right out to the main police station on Sundbybergsvägen in Solna. And in temperatures that were beyond human endurance and which would have beaten an Olympic marathon runner.
5.
At a quarter past nine on the morning of Thursday, May 15, the sun was already high in a blue and cloudless sky. Even though it was only the middle of May, it was already twenty-six degrees in the shade when Bäckström, bathed in his own sweat, crossed the bridge over the Karlberg Channel. Being a careful, forward-thinking sort of person, he had dressed for the trials ahead of him. A Hawaiian shirt, shorts, sandals without socks, even a bottle of chilled mineral water that he had put in his pocket so that if it proved necessary he could quickly counteract any looming attack of dehydration.
None of this had helped. Even though he had been voluntarily sober for a whole day for the first time in his adult life — he hadn’t touched a drop in twenty-five and a half hours, to be precise — he had never felt worse.
I’m going to kill that fucking witch doctor, Bäckström thought. So much for hangovers. He hadn’t touched a drop and was now into his second dry day, and he still felt as lively as an eagle that had flown into a power cable.
At that moment his cell phone rang. It was the duty desk in Solna.
‘We’ve been trying to get hold of you, Bäckström,’ the duty officer said. ‘I’ve been looking for you since seven o’clock this morning.’
‘I had an early meeting at National Crime,’ Bäckström lied, because that had been round about the time that he had finally drifted off to sleep.
‘What’s up?’ he asked, to fend off any further questions.
‘We’ve got a murder case for you. Our team on the ground could use a bit of advice and leadership. Someone’s killed an old pensioner. I hear the scene looks like an abattoir.’
‘What have we got?’ Bäckström grunted, and felt not the slightest bit better in spite of the good news.
‘I don’t know much more than that. Murder, definitely murder. The victim’s fairly old, apparently, a pensioner — like I said, they reckon he doesn’t look too pretty. Perpetrator unknown. We haven’t even got a description to put out over the radio, so that’s all I know. Where are you, anyway?’
‘I’ve just crossed the Karlberg Channel,’ Bäckström said. ‘I usually try to walk to work if it isn’t raining too much. It’s always good to get a bit of exercise,’ he clarified.
‘I see,’ the duty officer said, scarcely able to conceal his surprise. ‘If you like, I can send a car to pick you up.’
‘Good idea,’ Bäckström said. ‘Make sure they know it’s urgent. I’ll be waiting for them outside that soccer hooligans’ hangout on the Solna side of the bridge.’
Seven minutes later a patrol car had appeared, blue lights flashing, performed a U-turn, and pulled up by the entrance to AIK Stockholm’s supporters’ clubhouse. Both the driver and his younger female colleague had got out of the car and nodded amiably at him. Evidently they had an appreciation of the way things should be done, because the driver held open the back door on his side so that Bäckström wouldn’t have to sit in the seat behind the passenger seat that was usually reserved for suspects.
‘So here you are, Bäckström, waiting in classic criminal territory,’ the male officer said, gesturing toward the bushes behind Bäckström.
‘Holm, by the way,’ he added, pointing with his thumb at the chest of his own uniform. ‘That’s Hernandez,’ he said, nodding toward his female colleague.
‘What do you mean, classic territory?’ Bäckström said once he’d squeezed into the backseat, mainly because his thoughts had already turned to Holm’s female colleague. Long dark hair tied up in an artistic knot, a smile that could light up the whole of Råsunda Stadium, and a top deck that was putting her blue uniform shirt under serious strain.
‘What do you mean, classic territory?’ he repeated.
‘Oh, you know, that prostitute. This was where she was found, wasn’t it? Well, bits of her, anyway. The old murder that everyone reckons was committed by that coroner and that friend of his, a GP. Mind you, who knows? The head of crime out here, old Toivonen, apparently has an entirely different theory about what happened.’
‘You must have been involved in that, Bäckström?’ Hernandez put in, turning toward him and firing off a brilliant smile. ‘When was it? I mean, when did they find her? I wasn’t born then, but it must have been sometime during the seventies? Thirty-five, forty years ago? Something like that?’
‘The summer of 1984,’ Bäckström said curtly. And one more word from you, you little trollop, and I’ll see you get put on traffic duty. In Chile, he thought, glaring at Hernandez.
‘Oh, 1984. Okay, I had been born, then,’ Hernandez said, clearly not about to give up and still showing off her fine set of bright white teeth.
‘I don’t doubt it. You look a lot older, though,’ Bäckström said, not about to give up either. Suck on that, you carpet-munching bitch, he thought.
‘We’ve got quite a bit to tell you about this current case,’ Holm said by way of distraction, clearing his throat carefully as Hernandez turned her back on Bäckström and started looking through her notebook to make sure she got her facts right. ‘We’ve just come from there.’
‘Okay, I’m listening,’ Bäckström said.
Holm and Hernandez had been the first officers on the scene. They’d just stopped for coffee at the twenty-four-hour gas station behind the Solna shopping center when they heard the call over police radio. Blue lights and sirens, and three minutes later they were at number 1 Hasselstigen.
Their colleague over the radio had advised caution. He thought the ‘male individual’ who had called in wasn’t reacting like normal people do when they call with news like that. He showed no sign of losing it and had no trouble controlling his vocal cords. In short, he was suspiciously calm and collected, the way some nuts sound when they call the police to tell them about their latest exploits.
‘The guy who called in was delivering papers. An immigrant. Seems a nice lad. I think we can probably forget about him, if you ask me,’ Holm summarized.
And who the hell would ask someone like you what you think? Bäckström thought.
‘What about the victim? What do we know about him?’
‘He was the tenant of the flat, name Karl Danielsson. Older man, single, sixty-eight years old. Retired, in other words,’ Holm clarified.
‘We’re sure of that?’ Bäckström said.
‘Quite sure,’ Holm said. ‘I recognized him at once. I picked him up for being drunk and disorderly at Solvalla racecourse a few years back. He kicked up a right fuss afterward, reported me and the rest of the team for pretty much anything he could think of. And that wasn’t exactly the first time he’d been picked up for that sort of thing. Social problems, alcohol, all that. Socially marginalized, as they say these days.’
‘Your standard pisshead, you mean,’ Bäckström said.
‘Well, yes. That’s another way of putting it,’ Holm said, and suddenly it sounded as if he wanted to change the subject.