He Who Kills the Dragon

26.

A couple years before he ended up with the Solna Police, Superintendent Evert Bäckström had been expelled from his natural habitat in the National Criminal Investigation Department to the property tracing department of Stockholm Police. Or the lost property store, as all proper police officers, Bäckström included, called this final resting place for stolen bicycles, lost wallets, and wayward police souls.

Bäckström was the victim of evil machinations. His former boss, Lars Martin Johansson, a bastard Lapp, eater of fermented herring and closet socialist, simply hadn’t been able to deal with Bäckström’s successful battle with increasingly organized crime. Instead he had woven a rope from all the individual slanderous strands, hung it round Bäckström’s neck, and kicked the chair from beneath him himself.

The job in the lost property store was obviously a form of punishment. During the two years that followed Bäckström had been forced to look for stolen bicycles, an industrial digger that had disappeared, a yacht that turned out to have sunk in the outer archipelago, various items of environmentally hazardous waste, and barrels of shit. It would have broken the strongest man, but Bäckström had somehow put up with it. He had made the best of things. He had picked up one of his old contacts, a renowned art dealer, and had got a good tip-off, found a stolen oil painting worth fifty million, and made a nice little bit on the side while his cretinous bosses stole the glory from him. He was used to that, and he could live with it.

In the autumn of the previous year the same informant had given him some interesting information about who had killed Prime Minister Olof Palme, and he hadn’t hesitated for a second. Fairly soon he had uncovered both the murder weapon and a cabal of four upstanding citizens. All of them undoubtedly deeply involved in the murder. They had shared roots going back many years. Right back to the sixties, when they all studied law together at Stockholm University and spent their free time on various perverse and criminal activities. Among other things, they had a secret society that they called Friends of the Cunt.

When Bäckström had been on the point of questioning one of them, who happened to be a former director of the Public Prosecution Authority and a current member of parliament for the Christian Democrats, the shadowy forces that Bäckström was on the trail of had hit back and tried to destroy him. His archenemy, Lars Martin Johansson, who had spent his whole life as the lackey of those in power, had sent him to the police state’s own group of professional killers, the National Rapid-Response Unit. They had done their best to try to get rid of Bäckström, on one occasion throwing a shock grenade at his head. When they failed miserably in their objective, they had locked him away in a mental hospital.

But Bäckström got back on his feet, turned round, and hit back. Against all the odds. He had lined up the Police Officers’ Association on his side, as well as powerful forces within the media and evidently one or two influential but anonymous figures who must secretly have sympathized with his struggle for basic justice. A solitary figure is seldom strong — that was the bitter truth — but Bäckström had shown on more than one occasion that he was stronger than everyone else.

After only a few months he had been back at work. New piles of waste, but at the same time good opportunities to do a bit of work on the side for people who deserved it. All thoughts of finally solving the murder of the prime minister had been temporarily laid aside. Bäckström’s victory had had its price, admittedly, but he had a long memory, and sooner or later he would get the chance to call in all outstanding debts.

And it looked like his enemies were starting to back down. That bastard Lapp, Johansson, had suddenly resigned with immediate effect, which is what it was called these days when someone got fired, and just a month ago the head of personnel for Stockholm Police had contacted him and offered him a post as a superintendent in the crime unit of the Western District. Suddenly he was a full-fledged citizen of the force once more, with access to all the goodies kept in police computers. The chance to help one or two old friends in trouble, and forewarned was also forearmed. No more barrels of shit and lost wallets, just your average criminals, people who had chopped their wives’ heads off, blasted holes through the babysitter, or had a go at the neighbor’s underage daughter.

‘I promise I’ll think about it,’ Bäckström told the head of personnel with a serious nod.

‘It would be good if you could, Bäckström,’ the personnel head had said, leafing nervously through his papers. ‘Don’t take too long — they need you, you know. Toivonen, he’d be your new boss, is keen to have you as soon as possible.’

Toivonen, Bäckström thought. That Finnish joker, his little ‘fucking fox’ who he had trained to do some neat tricks twenty-five years ago. Couldn’t have turned out better, Bäckström thought.

The plan had been for Bäckström to start his new job as a violent crime detective with the Western District Police on Monday, May 12. That was when his new appointment came into force. But because Bäckström was still Bäckström, he had decided to start by taking some extra time off. He had called the Western District and told them that he was unfortunately unable to come in that day. An old job from his previous posting, concerning the dumping of environmentally hazardous material, was going to court that day and Bäckström was obliged to be there and give testimony.

The following day was impossible as well. He was due to undergo a thorough medical examination with the Stockholm Police staff doctors. It was a thorough check that was expected to take all day. He was therefore unable to appear at his new workplace until Wednesday. Then, the day before that, he had received the news that had almost killed him — from a doctor who turned out to be a latter-day Dr. Mengele — and when he staggered off to the Solna police station on Wednesday, May 14, it was with mortality in his heart.

Now, just one week later, he was himself again.

Bäckström is back, as always, Bäckström thought, because obviously he spoke fluent English. Since he was a discerning and habitual television viewer, on top of everything else.

On Monday, May 12, Anna Holt’s honeymoon was definitely over, and it didn’t have anything to do with Bäckström.

That morning two thieves had intercepted and robbed a security transport just as it was leaving the gates to the VIP entrance of Bromma Airport. When the criminals had transferred their takings and were about to make off, one of the two guards had used a remote control to detonate the capsules of dye inside the money sack. Then everything had spiraled out of control. The raiders had performed a U-turn and had run down the first guard as he attempted to run off. One of the thieves had jumped out of the vehicle and fired a number of shots with an automatic weapon, killing one guard and seriously wounding the other. Then they had driven off, abandoning the vehicle and the sack of money scarcely a kilometer from the scene of the crime. And then they had vanished without a trace.

That was just the start of Holt’s nightmare. That same night a renowned rogue from Finland had been shot outside his girlfriend’s flat in Bergshamra when he was about to drive away. It wasn’t clear where he was going or why, but in his hand he had been carrying a small suitcase containing everything from clean underwear and a toothbrush to a ten-millimeter pistol and a flick-knife. It was too late to ask him. Two shots to the head, definitely dead.

Toivonen, who was leading the search for the Bromma raiders, had long since stopped believing in coincidences of this sort. There was a connection here, and the following day his forensics experts had confirmed it. His latest murder victim had traces of red dye on both wrists. Dye that was difficult to wash off, and whose chemical composition, down to the last molecule, matched the dye that the security company used in their explosive capsules. It was also in the right place, if he had taken part in the raid, between his gloves and the sleeves of his black jacket.

Someone has started cleaning up after themselves, Toivonen thought.

When Bäckström’s ‘pisshead murder’ occurred two days later, Anna Holt had felt almost relieved. Finally a normal case, she thought. A gift from above, even. Soon she would have good cause to change her opinion on that matter.