Linda, As in the Linda Murder

21

That same morning the investigating team finally received the much anticipated forensic report, and everyone was present for the morning meeting. The atmosphere was charged as they heard that the results were conclusive. If they could only get hold of whoever left the DNA at the crime scene, Linda’s murder would be solved beyond any doubt. From the point of view of evidence, it was so overwhelming that anything the perpetrator might say after his arrest was completely irrelevant.

His DNA had been secured from seven different places. In the form of semen from the sofa in the living room. In the form of various bodily fluids on the dark blue Jockey shorts, size S, found under the same sofa. In the form of semen in the victim’s vagina and rectum. In the form of semen on the wall of the shower in the bathroom. In the form of blood on the windowsill. And finally from one other place that forensics hadn’t mentioned before. In the hall they had found a pair of trainers, size 42, Reeboks. The DNA that forensics managed to secure from these identified them as the perpetrator’s shoes.

‘We weren’t sure to start with,’ Enoksson explained. ‘That’s why we haven’t said anything before. But according to Linda’s mother, she’d never seen them before, so we sent them off to the National Lab, and it worked out.’

A pair of Jockey shorts and a pair of Reebok trainers. Worn by hundreds of thousands of men, and sold in their millions. Trying to track down whoever had bought them was out of the question. So they would have to rely on other leads, and according to Enoksson and his colleagues the nature of the traces that had been secured gave a good idea of the sequence of events.

The perpetrator comes in through the front door of the flat. Most of the evidence suggests that Linda lets him in. He takes off his shoes and puts them on the shoe-rack in the hall.

Then he and his victim end up on the sofa in the living room, where the perpetrator takes off his trousers and underwear and ejaculates on the sofa.

Then the action moves to the bedroom. The perpetrator ties Linda’s hands behind her back, gags her, and ties her ankles to the foot of the bed, probably in that order. Then he rapes her twice, first in the vagina, and then in the anus, and ejaculates both times. It seems probable that in conjunction with the second rape he makes the cuts on her lower back. Then, during or after this final assault, he strangles her.

Then he goes into the shower, washes, masturbates, and ejaculates once more.

‘And finally he escapes through the bedroom window,’ Enoksson said. ‘He goes out backwards, with his chest and stomach against the windowsill, to make the drop smaller. As he crawls out and lets go of the window-frame, he scratches himself on the edge of the windowsill, which is rusty and quite sharp.’

The clothes Linda was wearing on the night she was murdered had also helped the forensics experts to map the course of events.

‘According to witnesses who met her in the club, she was wearing the following,’ Enoksson said. ‘A pair of leather sandals with a slight heel and leather straps fastened above the ankle. A pair of low-cut and fairly loose dark blue linen trousers. An untucked linen blouse of the same colour, collarless and with five buttons. Over the blouse a black velvet waistcoat with black embroidery and blue pearls and sequins. She was also carrying a small rucksack made of blue velvet, with straps and detailing in blue suede, which could also be used as an ordinary handbag by adjusting the straps. Okay, so where have I got to? Ah, yes.’ He scratched his head. ‘Underneath she was wearing a pair of black pants and a black bra. So, a pair of shoes, a rucksack, and a total of five items of clothing. And now I’m getting to the real point.’

Linda seemed to have taken off her shoes and bag as soon as she got through the door. The shoes were kicked off and left on the floor beside the doormat, and her bag was leaning against the wall half a metre away. The velvet waistcoat, linen trousers and blouse were found in the living room, neatly folded in a pile on the arm of one of the armchairs. The waistcoat at the bottom, then the trousers, with the blouse on top.

Her pants and bra were on the floor of the bedroom. The pants were intact, albeit turned partly inside out, and were found on the floor on the side of the bed closest to the living room. Her bra was on the other side of the bed. The catch at the back had been undone, but the shoulder-straps were both broken.

‘The probable explanation is that the perpetrator took it off after tying her hands behind her back,’ Enoksson said.

The next item on Enoksson’s agenda was Linda’s jewellery. According to various witnesses questioned by the police, she was wearing a wristwatch on her left arm, a thin gold bracelet on the same arm, three different rings on her left hand, and one on the little finger of her right hand.

‘The watch plus five items of jewellery makes six in total,’ Enoksson said. ‘All six items were found in the big ceramic bowl on the coffee table in the living room.’ He clicked to bring up an image on the overhead projector showing the coffee table and the ceramic bowl. ‘Our interpretation is that she probably took her watch and jewellery off herself. Exactly as we think she did with the waistcoat, trousers and blouse.

‘If you look a bit closer at the ceramic bowl on the table,’ Enoksson went on, clicking to bring a close-up on to the screen, ‘you’ll see her mobile phone as well. Which leads us to my next point: the contents of her bag.’

Inside Linda’s bag they had found everything that might be expected to be in a bag like that. A total of one hundred and seven different objects. Her pocket diary, a leather wallet containing her ID card from police college, her driving licence, four small photographs of her father, mother and two of her female friends, her own visiting cards and four from other people, a bank card and various other plastic cards: membership cards, a VIP card for Grace, and another one for Café Opera in Stockholm.

The wallet also contained money: six hundred kronor in Swedish notes, thirty-two kronor and fifty öre in coins, and sixty-five Euros, making a total equivalent to approximately one thousand, two hundred kronor. There was also a small bag containing lipstick, eyeshadow and other items of makeup, a bag of mint throat sweets, a lip salve, a small plastic container of dental floss, a toothpick in a plastic sleeve, a small matchbox containing twelve matches, and various till and credit card receipts from different bars and shops. As well as the usual bits of fluff and other fragments that a careful forensics officer always finds at the bottom of any bag, no matter how fastidious its owner might have been.

‘Talking of makeup, she didn’t take hers off, which could be of some interest in terms of the sequence of events. She was still wearing it when she was found later that morning. Lipstick, eyeshadow and something I’ve forgotten the name of. Seems to have been her own. The thing I’ve forgotten is in the report. Nothing unusual.’

Finally, the bag also contained a key ring with a number of keys that matched the front door and various other locks at her father’s house. A car key, to a two-year-old Volvo S40 that Linda had been given as a graduation present from her father. Neatly parked in one of the private spaces right in front of the building. It was currently in the compound of the police station, but a forensic examination hadn’t come up with anything.

‘Well,’ Enoksson said. ‘Some of you are probably wondering about the key to her mother’s flat? That’s in the bowl on the coffee table as well.’

He showed another close-up of the ceramic bowl, and he had added a little red arrow pointing to an ordinary door key on a white metal key ring. The simple explanation for this — according to Enoksson — was that she usually kept the key to her mother’s flat in her pocket, whereas the bulkier key ring with the keys to her father’s house was kept in the bag.

‘To round off the story of the bag,’ Enoksson said, ‘there doesn’t seem to be anything missing from it. And it doesn’t look like anyone went through her things. So theft doesn’t seem to have been a motive. Money in her wallet, jewellery in the ceramic bowl, and her watch — one of those gold and steel Rolexes that her father apparently gave her on her birthday when she came of age, supposed to be worth about sixty thousand.’

After finishing with the contents of Linda’s bag, Enoksson went on to account for the various items the perpetrator used while he was raping, torturing and murdering his victim. This meant a Stanley knife and five different men’s neckties. There were pictures of each of these, and it looked like the perpetrator had been fortunate enough to find all of them in the flat after he got there.

The forensics team had found the knife on the floor of the bedroom, but before it got there it had been in a red plastic bucket on the draining board in the kitchen, along with other decorating tools. An ordinary Stanley knife, used for cutting wallpaper, fabric or floor tiles. A single-sided knife with a slanted and adjustable blade, capable of cutting to a depth of approximately one centimetre, and with a sharp point at the end of the blade.

‘This is what he used to cut her,’ Enoksson said. ‘Her blood is on the blade and handle, but the perpetrator’s prints aren’t. It looks like he wiped it on the sheet he used to cover her.’

The five neckties had been at the top of a box out in the hall. Linda’s mother was clearing out some old bedclothes, towels and clothes that were going to be thrown away.

The five men’s neckties were of the older, slimmer design, originally bought by the victim’s father. For some unexplained reason they had ended up with her mother after the divorce and were about to be disposed off, until the perpetrator decided to use them to bind and strangle their daughter.

Three of them were still on Linda’s body when she was found. The first was wound tightly round her neck, with the knot at the back to make things easier for the perpetrator, who seemed to have sat astride her thighs when he strangled her. The second had been used to tie her hands behind her back. The third was tied round her right ankle. A fourth was crumpled up on the floor. It held traces of Linda’s saliva and marks from her teeth. That was the one he had used to gag her, and presumably removed after he had strangled her. The fifth tie was fastened round the bottom end of the bed frame, and to judge from the evidence it had been used to secure Linda’s left ankle.

‘A very sad story,’ Enoksson concluded, shutting off the projector.

‘How are we doing with other evidence?’ Bäckström asked. ‘Hair, fingerprints, other remnants and fibres, all the stuff you lot usually find in places like this?’

There was a fair amount, according to Enoksson. They had found ten different strands of hair that had been sent to the National Forensics Lab. Various sorts: ordinary head hair, body hair and pubic hair.

‘Some of that’s bound to come from our perpetrator,’ Enoksson said. ‘But they haven’t finished the analysis yet. We took the easiest bits first.’

Same thing with fingerprints, other traces and fibres. Assuming that they found the right person, a considerable quantity of the evidence could be tied specifically to him.

‘Considering what we’ve already got, that’s almost overkill,’ Enoksson said. ‘But better too much than too little. Mind you, sometimes I think we suffer from a sort of evidential hysteria in this country. Probably thanks to all those programmes people see on television.’

You’re a proper little philosopher you are, Enok, Bäckström thought. ‘Have you got anything else for us?’

Enoksson looked hesitant. Shook his head.

‘Don’t sit there holding anything back,’ Bäckström said. ‘Out with it, Enok. Unburden your heart. Help your hardworking colleagues slaving away on the factory floor.’

‘Well,’ Enoksson said, ‘as far as that goes, I think I and my colleagues in forensics have done our bit. When I spoke to the National Lab about our DNA... but this is a long way from being certain, because research in this area is still in its... well, in its infancy, really, so there’s a serious risk that this could be wrong, but...’

‘Enoksson,’ Bäckström said sternly. ‘What did the bloke at the lab say?’

‘It was a she, actually,’ Enoksson said. ‘Well, in her opinion there are certain things that suggest that our DNA isn’t typical Nordic DNA. There’s some evidence to suggest that it comes from a perpetrator with a different background, if I can put it like that.’

Surprise, surprise, Bäckström thought, but he contented himself with a nod.

After a break for coffee and a bit of leg-stretching — Enoksson’s presentation had taken almost two hours — the medical officer took over. Nothing he had to say in any way contradicted what the police had managed to work out on their own, although he stressed that these were just his preliminary findings. His final report wouldn’t be with them for another couple of weeks, when all the analysis would be complete and he had had time to reflect on the results.

‘But what I can tell you at this stage,’ the medical officer said punctiliously as he leafed through his papers, ‘is that the victim died of asphyxiation through strangulation. Evidence from the post-mortem indicates that she was strangled with the tie round her neck, and that death occurred some time between three o’clock and seven o’clock, in the early hours of Friday morning.’

Sigh, Bäckström thought.

‘And the knife-wounds found on her left and right buttocks, according to the post-mortem results, are a good match for the knife in question.’

Sigh and groan, Bäckström thought.

‘Similar wounds have become more common in recent years in connection to this sort of crime. The popular description of them as torture wounds isn’t entirely misleading, even if people in my profession ought to refrain from speculating about a perpetrator’s possible motivations. There are a number of previous cases in which the perpetrators have used knives or other similar weapons, or lit cigarettes. We’ve also had a couple of cases where a taser has been used...’

And nobody cares about that right now, Bäckström thought.

‘The fact that there was considerable bleeding from the wounds, considering their nature, I mean, suggests that the victim was alive when the injuries were inflicted, and she probably put up considerable resistance. The body pumps adrenalin, and the blood pressure goes up significantly.’

Well, that’s always something, Bäckström thought. Our perpetrator isn’t crazy enough to torture a corpse.

‘The marks on her wrists and ankles are a good match with the ties secured in the forensic examination...’

Who’d have thought it? Bäckström thought, glancing at his watch.

‘Well,’ he said quarter of an hour later as he gazed imperiously round his troops. ‘What are you sitting here for? Get out there and find the bastard.’