He Who Kills the Dragon

49.

Bäckström had started Friday by going to see his boss, Anna Holt, and asking for reinforcements. Suddenly he had a double murder on his hands, the same strength team as before, and that had been inadequate from the outset.

‘I hear what you’re saying, Bäckström,’ Holt said, starting to sound more and more like her old boss Lars Martin Johansson. ‘The problem is that I haven’t got anyone I can give you. Right now we’re on our knees out here.’

‘Toivonen’s got thirty men to investigate a robbery with two fatalities. I’ve got five to take care of two murders. You have peculiar priorities in this station,’ Bäckström said, smiling amiably. That gave you something to chew on, you scrawny little nightmare, he thought.

‘I’m the one who decided the prioritization,’ Holt said. ‘So I’m going to stand by it. If any information comes to light that suggests that the people behind the robbery also killed Danielsson and Akofeli, I’ll be transferring you and your colleagues to Toivonen’s investigation.’

‘I’m not sure that would be wise,’ Bäckström said. Not just scrawny, he thought.

‘Why not?’

‘I find it hard to believe that the Ibrahim brothers would kill the man who helped them hide their money. And I find it even harder to believe that Danielsson tried to rip them off. He may have been a pisshead but he doesn’t seem to have had suicidal tendencies. But do you know what I find hardest of all?’

‘No,’ Holt said with a reluctant smile. ‘What?’

‘If they did it anyway — killed Danielsson because he tried to steal their money, I mean — then surely they would have thought about all their money that was left in Danielsson’s safe-deposit box?’

‘Do you know what, Bäckström? I have a feeling that you may have a point there. Maybe you’ve even got an idea of who did do it, who killed Danielsson and Akofeli?’

‘Yes,’ Bäckström said. ‘Just give me another week.’

‘Well, that all sounds excellent,’ Anna Holt said. ‘I look forward to hearing more. Now you’ll have to excuse me. I’ve actually got a lot to do.’

Just as well to kill two dykes with one stone, Bäckström thought, and went straight to Annika Carlsson to find out how things were going.

‘Not great just now,’ Carlsson said, and sighed. ‘The door-to-door didn’t turn up anything. Forensics are lying low and we haven’t heard anything from the National Lab or forensic medicine. And as for us, we’re short on ideas and leads.’

‘Akofeli,’ Bäckström said, shaking his round head. ‘There’s something not quite right there.’

‘But I thought Felicia had sorted that?’ Annika Carlsson said, looking at him in surprise. ‘Mainly thanks to you, actually, since you put her on the trail.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of his phone calls,’ Bäckström said, shaking his head. ‘There’s something else bothering me.’

‘But you don’t know what it is?’ Annika Carlsson said.

‘No, I don’t,’ Bäckström said. ‘It’s in here somewhere, but I just can’t put my finger on it.’

‘And you think it might be important to the case?’

‘Important?’ Bäckström snorted. ‘When I work out what it is, we’ll have this case cracked. Danielsson and Akofeli.’

‘Fucking hell,’ Annika Carlsson said, looking at him, wide-eyed.

Thank you and goodbye, Bäckström thought. How fucking stupid can you get?

‘You’ll have to help me, Annika,’ Bäckström said, nodding seriously at her. ‘I have a feeling that you’re the only one who can.’

‘I promise,’ Annika Carlsson said.

And that gave you something to chew on, while I go off and enjoy the weekend, he thought.

After that Bäckström had followed his usual Friday routine. Switched his phone’s message to ‘official business.’ Turned off his cell phone. Left the police station. Took a taxi to a safe location on Kungsholmen, where he ate a decent lunch. Then a short walk home to his cozy abode, a well-earned siesta, and, as the final part of his routine Friday program, he had visited his new masseuse.

An unusually body-conscious Polish girl, Elena, twenty-six, who had her health care practice close to his home, and who had Bäckström as her last client each Friday. She always ran through the whole program and usually concluded by giving the Bäckström super-salami a little taste of the delights to come over the weekend.

That evening he was going to have dinner with an old acquaintance. A renowned art dealer, Gustaf Gustafsson Henning, to whom Bäckström was pleased to have been of assistance on a number of occasions, and who had asked if he could take Bäckström to dinner.

‘How about the main dining room of Operakällaren at half past seven?’ Henning had asked.

Well-to-do, silver-haired, tailored, famous from antiques shows on television, and over seventy. Out and about, and in the circles that mattered, he was known by the nickname GeGurra, and he bore not the slightest resemblance to the notorious teenage gangster Juha Valentin Andersson-Snygg, born in 1937, whose records had disappeared from the archive of the Stockholm Police many years ago.

‘How about eight o’clock?’ Bäckström said, since he preferred to allow himself plenty of time for important matters of bodily and personal health.

‘Let’s say eight, then,’ GeGurra agreed.