He Who Kills the Dragon

46.

After her meeting with Toivonen, Holt had walked home to her flat in Jungfrudansen in Solna, stopping to do some shopping on the way. Her flat was only a couple kilometers from the police station and she liked to walk whenever she got the chance, especially on a day like today. Sun shining in a blue, cloudless sky. Twenty-six degrees and high summer in Sweden, even though it was still only the end of May.

Since she had become police chief of the Western District she had found herself thinking of it more and more often as her own kingdom, or possibly queendom, and of the importance of being a good and enlightened monarch who cared for justice and fairness and all the other people who lived there. Holt County, Holt thought, because presumably that’s what it would have been called, at least colloquially, if she had been a female sheriff in the Midwest or southern States.

More than three hundred and fifty square kilometers of land and water between Lake Mälaren to the west and Edsviken and the Baltic to the east. Between the old tollgates of central Stockholm to the south up to North Järva, Jakobsberg, and the outer archipelago of Lake Mälaren to the north. A queendom with some three hundred thousand inhabitants. Half a dozen billionaires, a few hundred millionaires, and maybe ten thousand who couldn’t put food on the table each day and lived off social benefits. Plus all the ordinary people in between.

A realm with five hundred police officers, many of whom could justifiably be reckoned among the finest in the country. And then there was Evert Bäckström, of course. Plus all the ordinary, normal officers in between.

Now the fire-breathing dragon had dug its claws into what was her territory and her responsibility. Five murders within the space of a week. As many as you would normally expect in a whole year in an area that was nonetheless reckoned to be one of the most crime-ridden in the country.

What I need is a white knight on a purebred charger who can kill the dragon for me, Holt thought, starting to giggle as she thought what would happen if she said that out loud in one of the meetings of the network of female police officers where she was on the board.

He who kills the dragon gets the princess and half the kingdom, Holt thought with a smile. And if that role is taken by any of our colleagues out here, then little Magdalena Hernandez stands a good chance of getting the role of princess, she thought. At least she would if their male colleagues got to vote on the matter.

She herself was too old, forty-eight that autumn, Holt thought with a sigh. Besides, she already had a man whose company she was enjoying more and more. She was very fond of him, maybe even loved him, even if up to now she had tried not to think like that. It would be quite good enough if my white knight kills the dragon for me, she thought.

He who kills the dragon gets the princess and half the kingdom, Anna Holt concluded, nodding to herself as soon as she had made the decision.

And I’d prefer it if he could get on with it straightaway, the police chief of the Western District thought.