‘You strangled Akofeli in your bedroom,’ Bäckström went on, nodding toward the closed door at the end of the living room. ‘After you’d fucked his brains out, so that he was suitably docile when you offered to give him a back massage. Before you both went to the police and laid your cards on the table.’
‘That’s the most fantastic story I heard in my whole life,’ Britt-Marie Andersson said. ‘But because it’s deeply insulting to me, I do hope you haven’t told it to anyone else, Superintendent. Because then I’d be forced to report you for slander. Grave defamation of character, as we’re supposed to call it these days. And what would that look like?’
‘Don’t worry. This is strictly between the two of us,’ Bäckström lied. ‘I haven’t breathed a word.’
‘Oh, I am pleased,’ Britt-Marie Andersson said, her smile almost back to normal again. ‘Suddenly I get the impression that you and I will be able to find a solution to this. Birds of a feather flock together, isn’t that what they say, Bäckström?’ Bäckström’s hostess said, pouring herself a third glass of cognac.
‘I met your former brother-in-law the other day,’ Bäckström said. ‘He’s a very interesting character.’
‘I find that hard to believe,’ Britt-Marie snorted. ‘He’s been an alcoholic for the past fifty years, hasn’t spoken a word of truth in his life.’
‘I thought I might tell you what he had to say anyway,’ Bäckström said. ‘And if I were in your shoes, I’d listen very carefully.’
91.
‘When I saw the notes in Kalle’s diary I thought you wanted to talk to me about Bea,’ Halfy said, pouring a generous measure into his coffee cup. ‘Then you suddenly started going on about a load of Muslims who haven’t got a thing to do with it. What is this, 9/11, or what?’
‘Bea,’ Bäckström said. ‘Tell me.’
‘My ex-sister-in-law. Britt-Marie Andersson. An old Solna girl, biggest tits in Solna and the best fuck north of the city back in the day, when men were men and before all the fags took over. And what did we get for it? A load of fucking lesbians.’
‘I still don’t follow.’
‘Bea, Britt-Marie Andersson. Known as Bea. Used to run BeA’s Salon, with a capital A. BeA’s Beauty Salon down in Sundbyberg. Did perms for a load of old bags, and if you turned up after hours or called and booked a time in advance, you could get a decent going-over behind the salon curtains. That was actually how my brother met her. Roly put him onto her. Mind you, Roly never had to pay, of course. Perish the thought. Swedish champion, the next Ingemar Johansson, they said in the papers. You should see his tool, Bäckström. If Roly had just dropped his shorts during a match and swung his ass, he could have knocked Ingemar out of the ring.’
‘But your brother ended up marrying her?’
‘Yes, he was crazy about her. It was around the time that Roly was losing his edge and spent most of his time on the canvas, and Bea went and married my brother. She’d got it into her head that my dear brother, Per Adolf, had a load of money. That it made more sense to take a chance on him rather than Roly Stålhammar, who’d soon be staggering around the center of Solna telling everyone about the good old days.’
‘So what happened after that?’ Bäckström said. ‘I saw that your brother died about ten years ago?’
‘Yes, and it was a hell of a relief, frankly. Me and the rest of the lads had already told him to go to hell. One evening when Mario had us all round for a party he called Mario a coon. So we renamed him Råsunda Hitler and told him to fuck off. Per Adolf, you know, and the silly sod had a mustache as well. So my brother married Bea and moved into a nice house up by Råstasjön. Mortgaged up to the eaves, but Bea didn’t know that when she fucked his brains out a few years later and imagined she was going to inherit the lot. But since my brother didn’t have a penny, she ended up in Hasselstigen. So she traded him in for Kalle the Accountant, Kalle Danielsson.’
‘So he had a bit of money?’
‘Things were starting to go well back then,’ Halfy said, nodding and pouring himself a fourth glass.
‘So what happened with Kalle Danielsson, then? Between him and Bea, I mean?’ Bäckström said.
‘He got just as crazy about her as my brother had been,’ Halfy said. ‘Gave up on little Ritwa and her lad. Shagging Bea was the only thing in his head. It must have cost him a good few million over the years to do it. You’ve read his diary?’
‘I still don’t get it.’
‘HA, AFS, FI,’ Halfy said. ‘I’m starting to wonder if you’re a bit thick, Bäckström,’ Halfy said.
‘I just have a bit of trouble if I try to think,’ Bäckström said. ‘I don’t suppose you feel like helping me?’
‘HA, as in handjob,’ Halfy said, illustrating this by playing air guitar above his own crotch.
‘AFS, as in Andersson’s fellatio special,’ he went on, pursing his lips.
‘And FI, of course. Full intercourse, for when you fuck like normal people do,’ Halfy concluded. Kalle was keeping a diary of when he had sex with Bea. It’s hardly that difficult to grasp? Five hundred for a normal handjob, two thousand for a blowjob. Five thousand for an old-fashioned fuck. It even says he had to pay ten thousand the time he forgot to wear a rubber and went in bare. Kalle can’t have been right in the head toward the end. Paying ten grand for a plain old fuck.
‘Forget the Arabs, Bäckström,’ Halfy said, draining his cup in one gulp. ‘This is all about Kalle Danielsson shagging my ex-sister-in-law, Britt-Marie Andersson. She went back to her maiden name when she realized my brother didn’t have a penny. She was a Söderman for ten years, and no one was happier than me when she changed it back to Andersson.’
‘Hang on a minute,’ Bäckström said, thinking hard. ‘Fellatio? No one really calls it that. What’s that all about?’
‘Typical Kalle,’ Halfy said with a grin. ‘He was always like that. A bit ironic. And Britt-Marie has always tried to make out that she’s better than she is, if I can put it like that. If you went to her, you didn’t get just any old blowjob. No, you got Andersson’s fellatio special, an AFS. Typical Kalle, if you ask me.’
‘I see,’ Bäckström said, checking to see that his ears were still stuck to his round head, just in case.
92.
‘Fellatio,’ Bäckström said, pursing his lips as he finished the summary of his conversation with Britt-Marie Andersson’s ex-brother-in-law.
‘Do you know what, Bäckström?’ Britt-Marie Andersson said, leaning forward and displaying her undeniably impressive charms as she put her suntanned hand on the inside of Bäckström’s left thigh.
‘I’m starting to think that you might be rather tempted yourself,’ she went on as her hand made its way up Bäckström’s well-cut yellow trousers.
Why the hell hasn’t she rung? Bäckström thought, glancing at his watch. Fucking attack dyke, he thought, just as a cell started to bleep somewhere in the room they were sitting in.
‘Yours or mine?’ Bäckström said. He pulled his phone out and held it up just to be sure.
‘Not mine,’ he said, shaking his head and putting it back in his pocket.
‘Probably a wrong number,’ Britt-Marie Andersson said, although just for a moment her eyes looked as narrow as his colleague Annika Carlsson’s. The same colleague who had just called the third cell, the one that only seemed to be used to take incoming calls from Karl Danielsson and Septimus Akofeli. At precisely the time that Bäckström told her to call.