He Who Kills the Dragon

8.

‘Okay,’ Bäckström said when they had all returned to the meeting room and could finally get going again so that this wretched business might come to an end sometime soon. ‘Let’s look at the victim. Then we can throw some ideas around, and before we leave we’ll work out a list of what we’ve done and what we’re going to do tomorrow. Today is Thursday, May fifteenth, and I think we could be finished by the weekend so that we can devote next week to more important cases than Mr. Danielsson.

‘What have we got on our victim, Nadja?’ Bäckström went on, nodding toward a short, plump woman in her fifties who was sitting at the end of the table and had already surrounded herself with an impressive pile of paperwork.

‘Quite a lot, actually,’ Nadja Högberg said. ‘I’ve looked up the usual information, and there are some juicy details in there. And I’ve spoken to his younger sister — she’s his only close relative — and she was able to contribute a fair few extra facts as well.’

‘I’m listening,’ Bäckström said, even though his mind was somewhere else entirely and even though the comforting sound of the seal on a bottle top being broken was echoing round his head.

Karl Danielsson had been born in Solna in February 1940 and was therefore sixty-eight years old when he was murdered. His father had worked as a typesetter and foreman at a printer’s in Solna. His mother had been a housewife. Both parents long since dead. His closest relative was a sister who was ten years younger than him and lived in Huddinge, south of Stockholm.

Karl Danielsson was single. He had never married and had no children. Or rather, no children according to the various registers the police had access to. He had spent four years in elementary school in Solna, then five years in junior secondary, where he passed his exams and got into Påhlmans Business College in Stockholm, where he spent three years. By the time he was nineteen he had completed a sixth-form economics course. Then he did his military service at Barkarby Airbase. He came out ten months later and got his first job as an assistant in a firm of accountants in Solna, in the summer of 1960, aged twenty.

That same summer he made his first appearance in police records. Karl Danielsson had been apprehended driving while in an intoxicated state and was fined sixty days’ wages for drunk driving and lost his driving license for six months. Five years later the same thing happened again. Drunk driving, fined sixty days’ wages. Driving license withdrawn for a year. Then seven years passed before his third offense, this time considerably more serious.

Danielsson had been drunk as a skunk. He’d driven into a hot-dog kiosk on Solnavägen and absconded from the scene. In Solna District Court he was found guilty of drunk driving and leaving the scene of a crime, and was sentenced to three months in prison and had his driving license revoked. Danielsson had got hold of a hotshot lawyer and went to the Court of Appeal, where he presented two different medical certificates regarding his problems with alcohol. He managed to get his conviction for absconding overturned, and the prison sentence was commuted to probation. But he didn’t manage to get his license back, and he evidently wasn’t bothered enough by this to apply for a new license when the sentence expired. For the last thirty-six years of his life Karl Danielsson had gone without a driving license, so there were no more convictions for drunk driving.

But even as a pedestrian he continued to attract the attention of the police. During this period the police had locked him up on five occasions, under the Act on Taking Intoxicated Persons into Custody, and it had probably happened more often than that. Danielsson always used to refuse to give his name, which he was under no obligation to supply. The last time he had been taken into custody, things had gone badly wrong.

It had happened on the day of the Elitloppet trotting race at Solvalla racecourse, in May five years before he died. Danielsson had been drunk and rowdy, and when he was being helped into the police van he had started fighting and flailing about. Resisting arrest and violent conduct against a public official, and merely being taken into custody turned into getting arrested, even if it ended the same as usual, with his being put in a cell in the Solna police station to sober up. By the time he was released six hours later, Danielsson had accused both the arresting officers and the staff at the station of physical abuse, in total three police officers and two custody officers. Another hotshot lawyer turned up, new medical certificates were submitted, and then everything spiraled into a big circus. More than a year passed before the first case went to court, and it had to be adjourned immediately when the prosecutor’s two witnesses for some reason failed to appear.

Because Danielsson’s lawyer was an extremely busy man, another year passed before time could be found for new proceedings. Once again they had to be postponed because the prosecutor’s witnesses failed to appear. The prosecutor lost patience and dismissed the case. Karl Danielsson was an innocent man, at least for that part of his life.

‘Considering the fact that the chances of being taken into custody and arrested for crimes of this nature are minimal, he must have been drunk pretty much the whole time,’ Nadja Högberg said, and she knew what she was talking about. She had been a civilian employed by the police in the Western District for ten years, after being born Nadjesta Ivanova and gaining a doctorate in physics and applied mathematics at Saint Petersburg State University. In the bad old days as well, when Saint Petersburg was called Leningrad and when academic requirements had been considerably stricter than they were in the new, liberated Russia.

‘What other fuckups has he made, then? Apart from rolling around when he’s been on the bottle, I mean,’ Bäckström asked, nodding toward Nadja Högberg.

Not that he was remotely interested in the murder victim’s dealings with his more or less retarded colleagues in the regular force and traffic division, but mainly to rein her in so that he could put a stop to this interminable meeting. So that he could finally drag himself home to Inedalsgatan and the remnants of what had until yesterday been his home. Get in the shower and put a stop to all the noise in his head. Gulp down a few more liters of ice-cold water. Gorge himself on raw vegetables and then do all the things that remained in a life that had been stripped of all meaning the day before.

Why can’t you ever learn to hold your tongue, Bäckström? Bäckström thought five minutes later.

Nadja Högberg had taken him at his word and was giving a detailed account of Danielsson’s various financial activities and the interactions with the judicial system that these had, in turn, led to.

The same year that he was first convicted of drunk driving, Karl Danielsson had been promoted from accounts assistant to head of the office’s section for ‘trusts, corporations, economic and charitable societies, estates and probate, private individuals, and miscellaneous affairs.’ After that things had really taken off. First he moved to the business section as a financial adviser and tax consultant, then after a few years he was appointed head of the whole group and was co-opted onto the board.

The week after his close encounter with the hot-dog kiosk on Solnavägen, soon after his thirty-second birthday, he was appointed deputy managing director and given a permanent seat on the board. A couple years after that he had taken over the whole company and renamed it Karl Danielsson Consultants Ltd. According to the company’s articles of association, the business was involved in ‘financial, accounting, and auditing consultancy, tax and investment advice,’ and also ‘management of property and capital investment,’ which must have been quite an achievement, since throughout this age of greatness the company never seemed to have had more than four employees. One female secretary and three men with the title of consultant and rather vague duties. Karl Danielsson himself was the owner of the company, its managing director, and the chairman of its board.

As such, he had acquitted himself considerably better than he had as Karl Danielsson, the possessor of a driving license and pedestrian. Over a period of twenty-three years, between 1972 and 1995, he had been investigated for various financial crimes on a total of ten occasions. Four cases of complicity in tax evasion and serious tax fraud, two cases of currency offenses, two cases of so-called money laundering, one case of aggravated receipt of stolen goods, and one case of dishonest dealing. In every instance the charges had been dropped. The suspicions against Karl Danielsson could never be proven, and every time, Danielsson had gone on the counterattack and reported his adversaries to the parliamentary ombudsman and the chancellor of justice, or both, just to be on the safe side.

In this he had also been more successful than his opponents. One of the investigating officers of the financial crime unit of the Stockholm Police had been picked up by the ethics committee of the National Police Board and had received a formal warning and been docked fourteen days’ pay. The parliamentary ombudsman had arrested one public prosecutor and one of the Tax Office’s auditors. The chancellor of justice had prosecuted one of the evening papers and secured a conviction for grave defamation of character.

After 1995 things had calmed down. Karl Danielsson Consultants Ltd. had changed its name to Karl Danielsson Holdings Ltd. There didn’t seem to have been much activity, and the company had never had any employees. Nadja Högberg had requested copies of the most recent annual accounts from the company records division of the Patent and Registration Office, and was planning to spend the weekend going through them.

He did not appear ever to have had a particularly remarkable income. Nadja Högberg had dug out his self-certified income declarations for the past five years, and his taxable income had hovered around 170,000 kronor per year. His state pension and a smaller private pension from Skandia. The apartment he lived in cost 4,500 kronor per month, and after tax and rent there were approximately 5,000 kronor left for other things.

If a person’s success can be measured by the titles he or she garners, then Karl Danielsson had lived a successful life and had left this world at the top. At the age of twenty he had started his career by working as an assistant in a firm of accountants with thirty-five employees. Forty-eight years later an as-yet-unknown perpetrator had put an end to it by smashing in his skull with the help of a cast-iron saucepan lid, by which time the company in which he had spent all his adult life had been for all intents and purposes dormant for almost fifteen years. In the phone book he was listed as a director, and according to the business cards the forensics experts had found in his otherwise empty wallet, the victim was both managing director and chairman of the board of Karl Danielsson Holdings Ltd.

A pisshead, a serial litigant, and a pathological fantasist, Bäckström thought.

‘You’ve spoken to his sister,’ Annika Carlsson said as soon as Nadja Högberg had finished. ‘What does she have to say about what you’ve just told us?’

Nadja Högberg said that she had confirmed all the main points. As a young man her brother had been ‘very fond of girls’ and ‘far too keen on partying.’ But things had gone well for him until he was approaching forty, after which time the drink seemed to have more or less taken over his life. She had also made it clear that they had never been particularly close. During the past ten years they hadn’t even spoken on the phone, and the last time they met had been around the time of their mother’s funeral twelve years ago.

‘How did she take it when you told her that her brother had been murdered?’ Annika asked.

For fuck’s sake, Bäckström thought, groaning silently to himself. Maybe we should have a minute’s silence?

‘Fine,’ Nadja said. ‘She was fine about it. She works as a staff nurse at Huddinge Hospital and seems pretty sensible, stable. She said it didn’t exactly come as much of a surprise. She’d been worried about something like this happening for years. Considering the life he led, I mean—’

‘We’ll just have to try to deal with our grief somehow,’ Bäckström interrupted. ‘So what do we think about all this?’

Then they had started throwing ideas around. Or one single idea that Bäckström, just to be on the safe side, threw out there all on his own.

‘Well, then,’ Bäckström said, since the others for once seemed to have the good manners to keep their mouths shut and let him start.

‘One pisshead has been murdered by another pisshead. If there’s anyone here who has any other suggestion, now’s the time to pipe up,’ he went on, leaning forward and resting his elbows heavily on the table, glowering at his colleagues.

No one seemed to have any objections, to judge by the unanimous head shaking.

‘Good,’ Bäckström said. ‘That’s enough suggestions. All that’s left is to work out where we are and how to smoke out Danielsson’s dinner guest from last night.

‘How’s the door-to-door going with the neighbors?’ Bäckström went on.

‘Pretty much done,’ Annika Carlsson said. ‘There are a couple of them we haven’t got hold of yet, and a few more asked if we could talk to them this evening, since they had to get to work. And there was one who had a doctor’s appointment at nine o’clock and didn’t have time to talk to us. It should all be done by tomorrow.’

‘The coroner?’

‘He’s promised to conduct the postmortem this evening and give us at least an oral report early next week. Our colleague Hernandez will be attending the postmortem, so we should know the basics first thing tomorrow morning,’ Annika Carlsson said.

‘Have we spoken to the taxi companies, have we had any tip-offs that are worth looking at, what about the search of the area round the building, and his social network, how did he spend his last few hours, have we spoken to—’

‘Calm down, Bäckström,’ Annika Carlsson interrupted with a broad smile. ‘It’s all under control. We’re well on top of this one, so you can relax.’

I don’t feel remotely relaxed, Bäckström thought, but he would never have dreamed of saying so out loud. Instead he merely nodded. Gathered together his papers and stood up.

‘See you tomorrow,’ Bäckström said. ‘One more thing before we go. About the paperboy who made the call. What’s his name, Sooty Akofeli.’

‘Septimus,’ Annika Carlsson corrected, without the slightest trace of a smile. ‘His name’s Septimus Akofeli. We’ve checked him out. Our colleagues have already compared the fingerprints they took off him at Hasselstigen with the ones he had to give the Migration Board when he first arrived twelve years ago. He is who he says he is, and, in case you’re wondering, he’s never been in any trouble.’

‘I hear what you’re saying,’ Bäckström said, ‘but there’s something about that bastard that isn’t right.’

‘What might that be?’ Annika Carlsson said, shaking her cropped head.

‘I don’t know,’ Bäckström said. ‘I’m working on it, so the rest of you can at least spare it a moment’s thought.’

As soon as he had left the meeting room he had gone straight to his new boss, police chief Anna Holt, and explained the situation to her. Pisshead victim. Perpetrator — with almost absolute certainty — also a pisshead. Case completely under control. It would be concluded by Monday at the latest, and he had finished in three minutes even though he could have taken five. Holt seemed almost relieved when he left. She had another matter to think about, and, compared to that, Bäckström’s murder seemed like a gift from above.

That gave the scrawny bitch something to think about, Bäckström thought, as he finally stepped out through the door of his new gulag.