He Who Kills the Dragon

9.

Jerzty Sarniecki, twenty-seven, was a Polish carpenter. Born and raised in Lodz, for the past few years he had formed part of the Swedish migrant workforce. And for the past month he and his workmates had been employed on the complete renovation of a small block of rented flats on Ekensbergsvägen in Solna, about one kilometer from the crime scene at number 1 Hasselstigen. Eighty kronor an hour, straight in his pocket, and free to work twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week if he felt like it. They bought food in a nearby ICA supermarket, they slept in the building they were working on, and everything else could perfectly well wait until they returned to civilization back home in Poland.

Around the time Bäckström was leaving the Solna police station, Sarniecki had made his discovery when he dragged a large plastic sack of rubble from the building to throw it into the trash bin out on the street. He clambered up an unsteady ladder and discovered another bag on top of the pile of rubble that neither he nor any of his workmates had thrown there. In itself, this was nothing unusual, the fact that Swedes in the neighborhood made the most of the opportunity to get rid of their own rubbish, but because experience had already taught him that they often threw away things that were still perfectly usable, he had leaned over and fished out the bag.

An ordinary plastic bag. Neatly tied at the top and full of something that looked like clothes.

Sarniecki had climbed down from the ladder. Opened the bag and taken out the contents. A black synthetic raincoat of the longer variety. It looked almost new. A pair of red washing-up gloves. Intact, scarcely used. A pair of dark leather slippers, which also looked practically new.

Why would anyone throw things like this away? Sarniecki wondered in surprise; then a moment later he discovered the blood on what he had just found. Loads of blood splattered over the raincoat, and the pale soles of the slippers were more or less dripping with it. The gloves were stained with blood even though someone had obviously made an attempt to rinse them off.

He had heard about the murder in Hasselstigen that morning, when their Swedish foreman showed up and told them over coffee. Some poor retiree, evidently, and normal, decent folk hardly dared leave their homes any longer. Think about what you’re saying, he had thought, as he’d listened with half an ear. Don’t curse the paradise that you Swedes actually live in, because it might be taken away from you, he thought. His Catholic priest back home in Lodz had taught him to think like that.

In spite of this he had wrestled with his conscience for several hours before calling the police. I wonder how many hours this is going to take? he wondered, as he stood and waited for the car the police had promised to send. How many hours at eighty kronor would they take from him and his fiancée and the child they were expecting back home in Poland?

A quarter of an hour later a patrol car had arrived carrying two uniformed officers. They seemed strangely uninterested. They had put what he had found, including the bag it had been in, inside another bag. They had made a note of his name and cell number. Then they had left. But before they went one of them asked if he had a business card. He and his father-in-law were thinking of building a sauna out at the summer cottage they shared out on Adelsö Island and might be needing some help at a reasonable price. Jerzty had given him the card that their Swedish foreman had told them to hand out whenever they received queries of this nature. Then they had left.

Later that evening a tall, fair-haired man, who was obviously a policeman even though he was dressed in a leather jacket and ordinary blue jeans, had knocked at the door of the building where Jerzty was working. He had opened the door to him, since he was working in the entrance hall, nailing up new plasterboard while his workmates were having a late supper a couple floors up in the room where they had set up their makeshift kitchen. The fair-haired man gave him a friendly smile and held out a sinewy hand.

‘My name is Peter Niemi,’ Niemi said in English. ‘I am a police officer. Do you know where I can find Jerry Sarniecki?’

‘That’s me,’ Jerzty Sarniecki said, before continuing in Swedish. ‘I speak a little Swedish because I’ve worked over here for several years now.’

‘Then you’re in the same position as me,’ Niemi said with a broad smile. ‘Is there anywhere we could talk undisturbed? I’d like to ask you a few questions.’