Linda, As in the Linda Murder

31 Skåne, Saturday 19 July

At the start of the week the Head of National Crime had flown down to Skåne to personally lead the hunt for the most dangerous criminal in the country. The madman from Dalby, a mass-murderer, and — in the world where people like Nylander were obliged to live — in all likelihood also a serial killer. To be close to the search area in and around Dalby, where his troops in the rapid-response unit had been deployed, he had taken quarters in the Grand Hotel in Lund.

At first they had had the poor taste to put him in an ostentatious suite, but when he explained in very clear terms about the operational circumstances of his visit they had swapped the suite for a normal double room with en suite bathroom. These wretched civilians haven’t got a clue about heightened states of alert, Nylander thought.

Unfortunately, though, late on Saturday evening a small incident occurred in his hotel room.

Nylander was tired after having spent more than fifteen hours out in the field. The heat had been troubling and there had been some difficulties about obtaining adequate supplies. As he was going to bed, when he was unloading, or possibly loading, his service revolver — the specific details were never made public — a shot unfortunately went off and hit the mirror in his bathroom. Because no great damage seemed to have been done, Nylander brushed his teeth, put the pistol under his pillow, where he always kept it when he was away from home on official duty, and went to bed. He was on the point of falling asleep when he was woken by someone knocking violently at his door.

Unhappily, the errant bullet appeared to have ended up embedded in the television of the next room. His hysterically inclined neighbour had rushed straight to reception, screaming out loud, wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts embellished with pictures of Donald Duck. The hotel staff had immediately called the police and told them that there had been ‘a series of shots fired in the room of the head of the National Crime Unit’. Just two minutes later the first patrol car arrived from Lund Police, and just to be on the safe side the rapid-response detail from the Malmö force was on its way.

After that the situation got out of hand. Even though Nylander himself calmly and systematically explained what had actually happened, and even suggested that everyone went back to their own business, he was ignored. The local officers were simply not professional enough to handle the situation. Instead they took his service revolver into safe keeping and dragged him to the police station in Lund for questioning, even though it was the middle of the night. After the interview they finally drove him back to the hotel.

‘Unfortunately I shall be obliged to write a report about this matter,’ Nylander said, fixing his eyes on the head of the Malmö rapid-response detail when they dropped him off outside the entrance to the hotel.

‘Go ahead, Nylander,’ the officer replied, in a broad Skåne accent. ‘As long as you promise to keep your hands above the covers.’

The following morning they found the sought-after madman. He was in a fisherman’s shed outside Åhus, and the fact that he was found by the owner of the shed rather than by Nylander’s rapid-response unit was in all likelihood explained by the fact that he was in the wrong place, in terms of the area being searched. To judge by the smell and the number of maggots, he had evidently been there for several days.

‘Looks like the bastard put the gun in his mouth and fired,’ the head of Nylander’s unit said.

‘Get a DNA sample from him and let our colleagues in Växjö know,’ Nylander said. Backwoods policemen, he thought. You had to do everything yourself.