Linda, As in the Linda Murder

39

During the night between Saturday and Sunday, while Bäckström was lying asleep in his unmade bed in the Town Hotel, another woman was attacked, right in the centre of Växjö, and just a few hundred metres from the hotel. The victim was a nineteen-year-old woman who was walking home alone after a party. When she opened the door to the building she lived in on Norrgatan at about three o’clock in the morning, an unknown man attacked her from behind, shoved her into the lobby, knocked her to the floor and attempted to rape her. The victim screamed and fought for her life. Several neighbours were woken by the noise and the perpetrator ran from the scene.

Within fifteen minutes everything was in motion. The victim had been taken to hospital. The crime scene was cordoned off, duty officers and forensics experts were on the spot questioning witnesses and looking for evidence. Three patrol cars were driving round looking for anything suspicious in the neighbourhood, reinforcements were on their way, and the phones of the team investigating the Linda murder were starting to ring. Detective Superintendent Olsson had his phone glued to his ear out at his summer house as he tried to pull his trousers on with his free hand, while trying to remember where he had put his car keys. Detective Superintendent Bäckström was still sleeping soundly. He had learned from previous experience to switch off his mobile phone and unplug the telephone in the room at night.

When he came down to breakfast on Sunday morning and Rogersson told him what had happened, it was pretty much all over, and it was already apparent that some of the details were distinctly unclear.

‘I spoke to Sandberg a short while ago,’ Rogersson said.

‘What did she say?’ Bäckström asked.

‘That there was something funny about the victim,’ Rogersson said. ‘Sandberg thinks she might have made the whole thing up.’

Little Sandberg, bloody hell, Bäckström thought. It’s amazing, the things you hear, he thought.

That evening Bäckström called his very own radio reporter, but just like the previous weekend he only got through to her answer machine. Aged mother, Bäckström thought, and in the absence of any better options he ordered food and beer up to his room and lay there channel-surfing for half the night, until he finally fell asleep.

Jan Lewin had started dreaming again.

Sweden, the mid-1950s. The summer of Jan Lewin’s seventh birthday, before he started school that autumn, and when he got his first proper bicycle. A red Crescent Valiant.

Grandma and Grandpa’s summer cottage out on Blidö in the Stockholm archipelago. Mum, Dad, and him. The sun shining day after day in a cloud-free sky. A proper Indian summer, his dad says, and for once his dad’s summer holiday never seems to end.

‘Why’s it called an Indian summer, Daddy?’ Jan asks.

‘That’s just what it’s called,’ Daddy replies. ‘When it’s an unusually long, hot summer.’

‘But what’s that got to do with the Indians?’ Jan persists. ‘Why do people call it an Indian summer?’

‘I suppose they normally get better weather than us,’ Daddy replies, then he laughs and ruffles Jan’s hair, and it seems a good enough answer.

That summer his dad taught him to ride a bike. Gravel tracks, clumps of nettles, ditches. The smell of creosote. Daddy running behind him, holding on to the saddle while Jan clutches the handles in his sweaty little hands and pedals as fast as he can with his skinny, suntanned legs.

‘I’m going to let go now,’ Daddy shouts, and even though Jan knows that he has to pedal and steer at the same time, it just doesn’t work. Either he pedals or he steers, and sometimes Daddy isn’t in time to catch him. Scraped knees, bruised shins, burning nettles, sharp thistles and thorns.

‘Let’s try again, Jan,’ Daddy says, ruffling Jan’s hair, and off they go again.

Steer and pedal, steer and pedal, and Daddy lets go and again he doesn’t get there before Jan falls off. And when he turns round he doesn’t see his dad about to help him up. He sees his colleague Bäckström, standing there grinning at him.

‘How fucking stupid can anyone be, Lewin?’ Bäckström says. ‘For fuck’s sake, you can’t just stop pedalling because I’m not pushing you.’

Then he had woken up, padded out into the bathroom, and let the cold water run as he massaged his eyes and temples.