He Who Kills the Dragon

23.

On Bäckström’s desk lay a safe-deposit box key, a copy of the prosecutor’s decision, and a handwritten note from Nadja. Name and telephone number of the female employee at the bank who could help with the practical details.

That was all he needed, but because Bäckström was by nature a curious person, he had taken a stroll past Nadja’s office on the way out.

‘Tell me how you did it, Nadja,’ Bäckström said.

It was nothing special, according to Nadja. First she had got hold of a list of customers who had safe-deposit boxes at the branch of Handelsbanken at the corner of Valhallavägen and Erik Dahlbergsgatan in Stockholm. Mostly private customers, and she had chosen to ignore them for the time being, as well as a hundred or so organizations. Private companies, trading companies, limited partnerships, limited companies, a few associations, and a couple estates. She had started with the largest group, the limited companies.

Then she had pulled out the details of people who were on the boards, or in management, or who owned shares — anyone who could be linked to the various companies. No trace whatsoever of a Karl Danielsson.

‘But I did find a limited company in which Mario Grimaldi and Roland Stålhammar are on the board and Seppo Laurén, you know, Danielsson’s young neighbor at Hasselstigen, is the managing director. Which seemed a bit too strange for my liking,’ Nadja Högberg said, shaking her head.

‘Yes, well, he’s retarded, isn’t he? Laurén, I mean?’

‘Possibly,’ Nadja said. ‘Alm suggested that he was, and I haven’t met him myself, but he hasn’t been declared legally incapable and he’s never gone bankrupt, so there are no formal reasons why he shouldn’t be a managing director. And that was presumably the whole point for Danielsson.’

‘This is phenomenal,’ Bäckström said. Fuck, this Russian ought to be head of the Security Police, he thought. Get the old boys there moving a bit.

‘It’s a small private company. Dormant for the past ten years or so, so it isn’t actually doing anything. And it doesn’t seem to have any assets either. It’s called the Writer’s Cottage Ltd. According to the articles of association, it offers writing help to private individuals and companies. Everything from advertising brochures to birthday speeches. The two women who set up the business evidently worked as secretaries in some advertising agency, and presumably they thought this would make them some extra money. It looks like they never got enough customers, so it was sold after a couple years to the then detective inspector Roland Stålhammar.’

‘Who’d have thought it?’ Bäckström said, looking almost as sly as he sounded.

‘If you ask me, I think Stålhammar and Grimaldi were used as fronts by Danielsson. If there’s any truth in what I’ve heard about Stålhammar, I doubt he knows anything about this.’

‘So what was Danielsson using it for? The Writer’s Cottage Ltd., I mean.’

‘That’s what I’ve been wondering too,’ Nadja said. ‘Because it doesn’t seem to have been active at all. But on the other hand, it did have a safe-deposit box.

‘I called the bank,’ Nadja went on, ‘and after a bit of reluctant digging in their customer files they found an old power of attorney giving Karl Danielsson access to the company’s deposit box. It turns out that the last time he visited the box was the same day he was murdered, the afternoon of Wednesday, May fourteenth. The last time before that was in the middle of December last year.’

‘Who’d have thought it?’ Bäckström said. ‘What does he have in the box, then?’

‘It’s the smallest box you can get,’ Nadja said. ‘Thirty-six centimeters long, twenty-seven wide, and about eight centimeters deep. So it can’t be very much. What do you think?’

‘Considering Danielsson’s character, I’d guess at some betting slips and old receipts,’ Bäckström said. ‘What about you, Nadja?’

‘Maybe a pot of gold,’ Nadja said with a broad smile.

‘Now, where would he have got that from?’ Bäckström said, shaking his head.

‘When I was a child back home in Russia... no... When I was a child back in the Soviet Union, and everything was miserable and poor and dull for the most part, and completely terrible far too often, my old father used to try to cheer me up. Never forget, Nadja, he used to say, at the end of the rainbow there’s a pot full of gold.’

‘An old Russian proverb,’ Bäckström said.

‘Definitely not,’ Nadja said, and snorted. ‘If you uttered that sort of proverb in those days you ended up with the KGB. But if you like, we could have a little bet, for a bottle of vodka,’ Nadja said with another smile.

‘Then I’m betting my bottle on receipts and betting slips,’ Bäckström said. ‘What about you, Nadja?’

‘A pot of gold,’ Nadja said, suddenly seeming all melancholic. ‘Not because it would ever fit in such a small deposit box, but because hope is the last thing that we Russians let go of.’

Shrewd, fucking shrewd, Bäckström thought. But just as mad as all Russians.

Afterward he had asked Annika Carlsson to drive them. Who the hell could bear to listen to an incest victim from Dalarna as he sat and droned on about a fat old blonde? Bäckström thought. Carlsson at least had the good sense to keep quiet as she drove, and just a quarter of an hour after leaving the Solna police station she pulled up outside the bank.

The female official had been very obliging. She had taken a quick look at their IDs, then went with them down into the vault, unlocked the box using her own and Bäckström’s keys, took out the little metal tray, and put it on a table.

‘One question before you go,’ Bäckström had said, stopping her with a smile. ‘Danielsson visited the box about a week ago. I believe you were the person who helped him? Do you remember anything about that visit?’

A hesitant shake of the head before she answered.

‘We’re under bankers’ confidentiality here,’ she said apologetically.

‘In which case you know that we’re here because of a murder, and that bankers’ confidentiality no longer applies,’ Bäckström said.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘Well, I remember the visit.’

‘Why?’

‘He was the sort of customer that you tended to notice, even if he wasn’t here very often,’ she said. ‘Always rather grand, slightly exaggerated gestures, and he used to smell of drink as well. I remember us laughing about it after he’d been here once. How long it would be before the Financial Crime Unit turned up in our branch.’

‘Do you recall if he had a briefcase with him at all? An attaché case in light brown leather, with brass detailing?’ Annika Carlsson asked.

‘Yes, I remember that. He always had it with him. Even last week when he was here to get things out of his box.’

‘Why do you say that?’ Annika Carlsson asked. ‘That he was here to get things out of the box, I mean?’

‘As I was getting the box he opened up his briefcase. It was completely empty. Well, apart from a notebook and some pens.’

‘Thank you,’ Bäckström said.

‘What do you think about these?’ Annika Carlsson asked when the official had left them, holding up a pair of plastic gloves.

‘What, to look at a little box that’s already got a load of bank officials’ prints on it?’ Bäckström said, shaking his head. ‘No point. We’ll leave that to Niemi and his chums.’ Betting slips and old receipts, he thought.

‘Okay, Annika,’ Bäckström said, grinning and weighing the box in his hand. ‘What do you think about a little bet?’

‘A hundred, no more,’ Annika Carlsson said. ‘I don’t usually bet. Okay, I reckon it’s betting slips and receipts. What about you, then, Bäckström?’

‘A pot of gold. You know, Annika. At the end of every rainbow there’s always a pot of gold,’ Bäckström said, and opened the box.

Fuck, he thought, as his eyes grew as round as his head. Why the fuck didn’t I come here alone? I’d never have had to wipe my own ass again for the rest of my life, he thought.

‘Are you psychic, Bäckström?’ Annika Carlsson said, looking at him with wide-open eyes that were just as round as his.