He Who Kills the Dragon

6.

Same as usual, Bäckström thought. Beyond the cordons that had been set up in front of the building crowded the usual collection of journalists and photographers, neighbors, and the generally curious who had nothing better to do. Plus the usual rabble, of course, who had probably ended up there without even wondering how it had happened. Among them were three suntanned youths who took the opportunity to comment on Bäckström’s clothing and appearance as he squeezed under the cordon with a certain amount of difficulty.

Bäckström had turned back and glared at them, to register their appearance in his memory for the day when they eventually met in his own place of work. It was only a matter of time, and, when the day finally arrived, he intended to make it a memorable experience for the little shits.

As he passed the young uniformed officer standing by the door of the building, he had given his first order in connection with this new murder investigation:

‘Call surveillance and get them to send a couple guys to take some nice pictures of our charming audience,’ Bäckström said.

‘It’s already done,’ his colleague informed him. ‘That was the first thing the Anchor said to me when she arrived. Our colleagues from surveillance must have been here taking pictures for a couple hours now,’ he added, for some reason.

‘Anchor? What bloody anchor?’

‘Annika Carlsson. You know, our tall brunette colleague, used to work in robbery. Nicknamed the Anchor.’

‘You mean that fucking virago?’ Bäckström said.

‘I wouldn’t like to comment, Bäckström,’ his colleague said with a grin. ‘But obviously, you can’t help hearing things.’

‘Such as?’ Bäckström said suspiciously.

‘Well, it’s probably best to avoid getting into an arm-wrestling contest with her,’ his colleague said.

Bäckström had contented himself with a shake of the head. Where the hell are we heading? he wondered as he stepped inside the door of the building at number 1 Hasselstigen. What the hell is happening to the Swedish Police? Faggots, dykes, darkies, and the usual yes-men. Not a single ordinary police constable as far as the eye can see.

At the crime scene everything looked the way it usually did when someone had beaten an old pisshead to death in his own flat. In short, things looked even worse than they usually did in the home of an old pisshead. This particular example was lying on his back on the hall rug just inside the door, with his feet facing the door, his legs apart, and his arms stretched out above his crushed skull, almost like he was praying. To judge by the smell, his gray gabardine trousers had filled up with excrement and urine when he died. There was a meter-wide pool of blood on the floor. The walls on both sides of the narrow hallway were splattered with blood from floor to ceiling, and there were even traces of blood on the center of the ceiling.

Bloody hell, Bäckström thought, shaking his head. Really, he ought to call Beautiful Homes with a tip-off so all those interior designer queers could finally get something serious to chew on, something with the real common touch. A little My-Lovely-Home report from social group seventeen, Bäckström thought. Then his thoughts were interrupted by someone tapping on his shoulder.

‘Hello, Bäckström. Good to see you,’ Detective Inspector Annika Carlsson, thirty-three, said with a friendly nod.

‘Hello,’ Bäckström said, making an effort to sound less rough than he felt.

A woman who was half a head taller than him, even though he was a tall, well-built man in the prime of life. Long legs, narrow waist, irritatingly fit, and with everything in the right place. If she just let her hair grow a bit and put on a short skirt, she could even pass for a completely normal woman. Apart from her height, of course, but it was presumably too late to do anything about that, and with a bit of luck she might have stopped growing by now, even though she was still wet behind the ears.

‘Have you got any particular instructions, Bäckström? The forensics team are done with their preliminary checks, and as soon as they’ve got the body off to the forensics lab you can take a look at our crime scene.’

‘Later,’ Bäckström said, shaking his head. ‘Who the fuck is that?’ he asked, nodding toward a slight, dark-skinned figure sitting crouched against a wall at the far end of the shared landing. With a closed, melancholy expression on his face and a cloth bag with newspapers sticking out of it over his shoulder.

‘That’s our paperboy, the one who made the call,’ Carlsson said.

‘Who’d have thought it?’ Bäckström said. ‘So that’ll be why he’s got a bag of newspapers hanging from his shoulder.’

‘No flies on you,’ Carlsson said with a smile. ‘To be more precise, he’s got five Dagens Nyheter and four Svenska Dagbladet. The victim’s copy of Svenska is lying over there by the door,’ she went on, nodding toward a folded newspaper on the floor by the entrance to the victim’s flat. ‘He’d already delivered one copy of Dagens Nyheter to an old woman on the ground floor.’

‘What do we know about him, then? The paperboy?’

‘Well, to start with it looks like he’s completely clean,’ Annika Carlsson said. ‘Forensics have checked him out and they didn’t find any traces at all on his body or clothes. Considering the state of things in there, he’d have been completely drenched in blood if he was the one who attacked our victim. He told us himself that he felt the victim’s face, his cheek, to be more accurate, and when he realized he was completely stiff, he knew that the victim was dead.’

‘So he’s studying medicine, is he?’ Bloody hell, Bäckström mused. The little sooty clearly wasn’t lacking ambition.

‘I believe he saw a lot of dead bodies in his former homeland,’ Carlsson said, this time without smiling.

‘Did he take the opportunity to slip anything into his pockets?’ Bäckström asked, falling back on old instincts as far as sooties like that were concerned.

‘He’s been searched. That was the first thing the patrol did when they got here. In his pockets he was carrying a folder containing his driving license, an ID card from the paper that handles distribution of the papers out here, a small amount of money in coins and notes — about a hundred kronor, I think, mostly coins. And a cell phone that belongs to him. And we’ve made a note of the number, in case you’re wondering. If he did take anything, he didn’t have it on him, and we’ve already searched the communal areas of the building, so he didn’t hide anything there.’

Fucking hell. They’re lazy bastards as well, Bäckström thought, not ready to give up.

‘Did he make any calls, then?’

‘According to what he says, he only made one call. Emergency services, 112. They put him through to our colleagues in the pit. He says the only person he spoke to was the operator there, but obviously we’re going to check that out. He’s on the list of phone numbers we’ll have to investigate.’

‘Has he got a name, then?’ Bäckström said.

‘Septimus Akofeli, twenty-five years old, a refugee from Somalia, Swedish citizenship, lives in Rinkeby. We’ve taken fingerprints and a DNA sample, but we haven’t had time to check them yet. But I’m pretty sure he is who he says he is.’

‘What did you say his name was?’ Bäckström said. What a bloody name, he thought.

‘Septimus Akofeli,’ Annika Carlsson replied. ‘One of the reasons I haven’t let him go yet is that I thought you might want to talk to him.’

‘No,’ Bäckström said, shaking his head. ‘As far as I’m concerned, you can send him home. But I thought I might take a look at our crime scene, on the other hand. If those wannabe academics from forensics are going to be finished anytime soon.’

‘Peter Niemi and Jorge Hernandez, known as Chico,’ Annika Carlsson said with a nod. ‘They’re part of our forensics team out here in Solna, and we couldn’t ask for better, if you ask me.’

‘Hernandez? Where have I heard that name before?’ Bäckström said.

‘He’s got a younger sister, Magdalena Hernandez; she’s one of our uniforms. You’ve probably seen her about, maybe it’s her name you’re thinking of.’ Annika Carlsson smiled broadly for some reason.

‘Why do you say that?’ Bäckström wondered.

‘Sweden’s most attractive female police officer, according to the majority of her colleagues. And from my own point of view, I reckon she’s a great girl,’ Carlsson said with a smile.

‘You don’t say,’ Bäckström said. I daresay you’ve been there already, he thought.

Inside the flat, things were just as bad as Bäckström had imagined. First a little cloakroom and narrow hall. On the left a small bathroom and toilet, followed by a small bedroom. On the right a kitchen with a dining table, and straight ahead a living room. All in all, about fifty square meters, and it wasn’t exactly clear when the occupant had last done any cleaning. Not this side of the new year, at any rate.

The furnishings were shabby and worn, and the décor likewise. Everything from the unmade bed with the pillow with no pillowcase to the filthy kitchen table and the sagging sofa and armchair in the living room. Yet the things in there bore witness to the fact that the murder victim, Karl Danielsson, had seen better days. A few worn Persian rugs. A sturdy old-fashioned mahogany writing desk with a decorative inlay of some lighter wood. A twenty-year-old television, but it was still a Bang & Olufsen television. And the armchair in front of it was an English leather wing chair with matching footstool.

Drink, Bäckström thought. Drink and loneliness, and he himself had never felt worse since those Neanderthals in the National Rapid-Response Unit had thrown a shock grenade at him some six months ago. He hadn’t regained his senses until the next day, and by then they had already had time to shut him away in the psychiatric unit of Huddinge Hospital.

‘Anything else you want, Bäckström?’ Annika Carlsson asked, and for some reason she looked almost worried as she did so.

A couple large shorts and a pint, Bäckström thought. And if you let your hair grow and put a skirt on, then maybe you can give me a blowjob. But don’t start thinking you can get any more than that, he thought, since only twenty-four hours ago he was having serious doubts about earthly desires and spiritual love.

‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘See you back at the station.’

There’s something that doesn’t make sense, Bäckström thought, as he walked slowly back to the police station. But what was it? And how was he supposed to work it out with a brain that was suffering acute dehydration and was probably already damaged beyond repair? I’m going to kill that fucking witch doctor, he thought.