Linda, As in the Linda Murder

28

Before the Wednesday morning meeting, Thorén had called his colleague in Gothenburg and asked for his help in getting a DNA sample from their fellow officer, Randy Karlsson. His friend had promised to do what he could and get back to him as soon as he had done so, then called Randy Karlsson on his mobile, and got through to him straight away.

In spite of the early hour, Randy Karlsson was already at a terrace café in Marstrand, looking at girls. Thorén’s acquaintance had asked how the summer had been so far, seeing as he always thought it best to start cautiously no matter what subject you wanted to talk about. Brilliant, according to Randy Karlsson. He’d spent his holiday travelling round the west coast. He had started in Strömstad in the north, and had worked his way down through Lysekil, Smögen and a few smaller places that he’d already managed to forget the names of. And now he was sitting by the water in Marstrand, a few kilometres north of Gothenburg.

‘It’s incredible,’ he said happily. ‘You wouldn’t believe the number of girls. There’s no end of them. And the weather... talk about saving time!’ He didn’t have any problem providing a DNA sample voluntarily. He had already done so on numerous occasions in relation to various paternity disputes in Sweden and elsewhere, and he had always been okay. ‘It’s great,’ he said, sounding even happier. ‘I haven’t got caught once. It looks like I’m immune to that shit.’

To save time they had agreed that Karlsson — as soon as he had a gap in his packed schedule — would visit the local police station in Marstrand and provide the promised sample there. Whatever the point of that was, Thorén’s acquaintance thought when he hung up.

Adolfsson and von Essen didn’t attend the morning meeting, because they had been appointed as the team’s DNA-sampling specialists, and had begun the day in a particularly successful way. First they managed to get hold of the shooting instructor, who was an old acquaintance of Adolfsson’s, being a member of the same hunting party. Bolstered by this success, they had gone to find the officer who had been at the nightclub and was refusing to cooperate. He was sitting at home polishing the text of his complaint to the judicial ombudsman, but once Adolfsson and von Essen had talked some sense into him he had made the right decision.

‘What do we do next?’ Adolfsson asked. After all, Gustaf’s still the boss, he thought.

‘Now we deal with the trainee who seems to be refusing to answer his phone,’ von Essen said. ‘Then we’ll have got everyone who was at the club with Linda.’

At the meeting they had first discussed the current state of the case, then mainly talked about the DNA samples. For once, everyone there seemed to be in complete agreement. If they didn’t find him any other way, sooner or later their perpetrator would get caught in their DNA net. The only person to express any doubt was Lewin.

‘There are risks in this sort of thing,’ he said cautiously, nodding towards the chart on the notice board saying how many samples had been taken.

‘How do you mean?’ Olsson asked.

‘There’s a risk that you lose control of an investigation,’ Lewin said. ‘It’s happened before, and it’ll probably happen again, and in spite of the fact that we’ve got the perpetrator’s DNA we still haven’t found him. I can give you half a dozen recent examples off the top of my head.’

Speak for yourself, bloody conspiracy theorist, Bäckström thought. Personally, he was happy to get samples from the whole world if necessary.

‘What do you think, Bäckström?’ Olsson said.

‘I’ve heard that before,’ Bäckström said curtly. ‘And from the same person, strangely enough,’ he added, harvesting a number of smiles. ‘This is all about discounting people who don’t have anything to do with the case as quickly as possible, and if you ask me there’s no better way of keeping control of an investigation.’ You look after your own business and I’ll deal with the rest, he thought, glowering at Lewin.

Everyone else round the table nodded in agreement, and Lewin made do with a shrug of the shoulders. Then they changed subject, to discuss the reward that Linda’s father wanted to announce.

‘He’s called me and the county police commissioner,’ Olsson said, stretching himself up for some reason. ‘But I’m concerned it might send the wrong message... at this early stage, I mean, because it’s not even a fortnight yet... to announce a reward.’

What a load of crap, Bäckström thought. If he didn’t want to have to sit here half the day it would be just as well to do something about it now.

‘It’s like this,’ he said. ‘If it’s someone she knows we’ll get him anyway, whether or not he’s said anything to someone who might consider telling us for a bit of money. And if it’s a complete nutter, as some people seem to think, then he probably hasn’t got anyone he could tell, so we’d have nothing to gain from a reward whenever it was offered. If it’s your standard junkie, then all his friends probably know about it by now, so it might speed things up a bit. Either way, sooner or later we’ll find out anyway.’

‘Should I interpret that to mean that you don’t think it would actively harm the investigation?’ Olsson said carefully.

‘What sort of money are we talking about?’ Interpret it whatever fucking way you want to, you poof.

‘Her father suggested a million kronor. To start with,’ Olsson said, and the room suddenly fell silent.

‘What?’ Bäckström said. Her dad must be mad. Give me the money instead, he thought.

‘What does it cost to get a fix in this town?’ Rogersson asked suddenly, nodding towards one of the officers who usually worked in the Växjö drug squad.

‘Depends what you want,’ the officer said. ‘Same as in the big city, I guess. Five hundred or more if you want heroin. You can get amphetamines for a couple of hundred. Hash costs next to nothing if you take a trip to Copenhagen.’

‘Christ, we’ll be deluged with a load of crazy junkies trying to sell a load of crazy stories. No reward,’ Bäckström said, getting up. ‘Well, if there’s nothing else, I suggest we try to get some work done.’

After lunch Bäckström shut himself away in his room and switched on the red lamp so he would be left to think in peace. I ought to get them to put a bed in here, he thought. He’d stopped stretching out on top of his desk years ago, and he didn’t even have a decent cushion in the room. Maybe I ought to fix up somewhere closer than the hotel, he thought, but these encouraging thoughts were interrupted by a discreet knock on the door.

‘Come in,’ Bäckström roared. And I’ll rip you to shreds, you colour-blind bastard, he thought.

‘It’s not that I’m colour blind,’ Adolfsson said apologetically. ‘Nor my colleague here either,’ he said, nodding towards von Essen, who was standing just behind him. ‘But there’s something we’d like to talk to you about, boss. Could be of interest, actually.’

This lad’s going to go far, Bäckström thought, pointing amiably at the only spare chair in the room. ‘Take a seat, lad,’ he said. ‘And get another chair from the corridor,’ he said to von Essen. If you don’t want to sit on the floor, you stuck-up bastard.

‘So what is it?’ he said encouragingly to Adolfsson.

‘There was something that struck us,’ Adolfsson said. ‘What Enoksson said that woman at the forensics lab told him. That our perpetrator didn’t have standard Nordic DNA. The fact that we’re looking for a darkie, basically.’

‘Adolf’s thoughts often fall into this pattern,’ von Essen said lightly as he examined his fingernails.

‘I’m listening,’ Bäckström said, giving von Essen the evil eye. And you can shut up, he thought.

‘It’s about her colleague at police college, the one who was at the same club as Linda the night she was murdered, the one we haven’t managed to get a sample from. His name’s Erik Roland Löfgren.’

‘Erik Roland Löfgren? He sounds really exotic.’

‘He seems to live in town, mainly. We’ve tried to get hold of the young man at his home address, to offer him a little cotton-bud, but he wasn’t there,’ von Essen said, apparently not having noticed Bäckström’s evil eye.

‘Okay, shut up, von Essen,’ Bäckström said in his most polite voice. ‘Go on,’ he continued, nodding to Adolfsson.

‘It’s actually better than it sounds,’ Adolfsson said, passing a photograph to Bäckström. ‘This is the picture on his ID card at college. So it isn’t all bad news,’ he added, looking quite pleased with himself.

Black as night, Bäckström thought, looking at the photograph. And at that moment he started to feel the familiar old tingling. ‘So what do we know about him, then?’

He was in the same class at police college as Linda, twenty-five years old, adopted from French west Africa at the age of six, ending up with Swedish parents and getting a couple of older Swedish siblings into the bargain.

‘His adoptive father’s a senior consultant at Kalmar Hospital, the mother’s head of a high school somewhere in Kalmar. The finer sort of folk, to be blunt. Not like some poor sods who have to grow up out in the middle of nowhere,’ Adolfsson said. He was the son of one of the biggest farmers in the area, and grew up on the family farm outside Älmhult.

‘What else do we know?’ Bäckström asked. Six years old when he arrived from deepest Africa, and probably only someone like Brundin could work out the sorts of things he learned there. This just gets better, he thought.

‘Decent grades — nothing outstanding, but good enough for someone like him to get into police college,’ Adolfsson said. ‘If you get what I mean, boss.’

‘So what are his interests, then?’ Bäckström gave von Essen a warning glance as he sat there looking up at the ceiling.

‘He’s got a weakness for the ladies, and he’s evidently brilliant at football,’ Adolfsson said.

‘Plays in the college team,’ von Essen added. ‘Supposed to be their best player. So although he prefers Roland, everyone just calls him Ronaldo, presumably after that Brazilian who plays professionally.’ Von Essen looked as if he preferred rather more cultured activities.

‘Everyone calls him Ronaldo,’ Bäckström said slowly, and because the penny from the diary had already dropped inside his head, the whole room was suddenly tingling now. ‘Okay, this is what we’re going to do, lads.’ To emphasize the point he leaned over his desk and looked them in the eyes one at a time.

‘Number one,’ he said, holding up a stubby index finger, ‘not a word about this to anyone but me. This building’s leaking like a fucking sieve. Number two, I want you to find out everything you can about him and his contact with Linda. Without anyone working out what you’re doing. Number three, don’t do anything that could alarm him. Leave him alone. Don’t try to track him down, because we’re going to find him anyway.’ When it’s time, he thought.

‘Understood, boss,’ Adolfsson said.

‘Sure,’ von Essen said.

As soon as Adolfsson and von Essen left, he called in Knutsson and Thorén. He explained what it was about, and how they were going to proceed.

‘Not a problem for me,’ Knutsson said.

‘It’ll be nice not to have to read everything we’re doing in the papers,’ Thorén agreed.

‘Okay, let’s get going.’ Finally, we’re getting somewhere, Bäckström thought.

‘You don’t think he could have taken off already?’ Knutsson said. ‘If it is him, I mean.’

‘Bearing in mind that he doesn’t seem to be at home and isn’t answering his mobile,’ Thorén added.

‘And that’s why I thought we could start by taking a look at his call register,’ Bäckström said. Fucking morons.

A good boss must be able to delegate, Bäckström thought, putting his feet up on his desk as soon as he was alone in the room. And he must be able to make decisions as well. Like picking the right automated message for his phone, sneaking back to his hotel room, having a cold beer and spending a couple of hours in the land of nod. In an emergency, if everything kicked off, his faithful associates would just have to call him. After all, he was their boss.