Linda, As in the Linda Murder

46 Växjö, Monday 4 August

For the investigating team, the week began peacefully, in an almost academic atmosphere. During the morning meeting Enoksson ran through the latest forensic results from the National Forensics Lab and the other experts they had approached.

The fingerprints that had been secured at the crime scene had now been examined. Five of them belonged to people who hadn’t yet been identified. One of these sets ought reasonably to belong to the perpetrator, and they also had an idea of which set was the most interesting. But because they weren’t entirely sure, they had run all of the prints through the national police fingerprint register, without getting any matches. Of course this could simply mean that none of the prints belonged to the perpetrator and that he was still in the register.

Ten pubic hairs, two strands of body hair, and several strands of head hair belonged to the perpetrator. The DNA results left no room for doubt on that point. Other forensic tests on the hairs, blood and sperm had contributed additional information about the perpetrator they were trying to find.

‘That idea that he may have dabbled in various drugs turns out to be pretty accurate,’ Enoksson said. The head hairs had contained traces of cannabis. Because it looked as though the killer hadn’t cut his hair for a couple of months — medium length dark blond hair with no trace of grey, and possibly the most common cut for Växjö men who weren’t too old — they were able to hazard a guess at his pattern of consumption.

‘He doesn’t seem to have been a particularly frequent user. According to the expert I spoke to at the National Lab, maybe once every two or three weeks, something like that. Definitely not a heavy user.’ Enoksson shrugged his shoulders. ‘Besides, it looks like he had rather more strings to his bow. Tests have found traces of stimulants in the blood he left behind, even though there wasn’t much of it. In this sort of context, I mean. So that’s really not bad.’

‘So, someone who smokes hash now and then, and also uses amphetamines, if I’ve understood correctly,’ Lewin said.

‘Yes,’ Enoksson said. ‘Although I’d prefer to say that he uses both, because there are various ways of taking hash and amphetamines. Administering the dose, as medical doctors usually say. In other words, we’ve got someone who consumes cannabis between once a month and once a week, and he probably does so by smoking hash and/or marijuana. That’s the most common method of consumption, especially among infrequent users, but of course there are other ways, as I’m sure many of you are aware.’

‘What about the amphetamines?’ Lewin prompted.

‘Same reservations there,’ Enoksson said. ‘Amphetamine or some other general stimulant. There are a number of closely related products on the market. He could have injected it, eaten it, or even drunk it. According to the lab, he doesn’t seem to have been a frequent user of that either. If our friends in Linköping had to hazard a guess, they reckon he consumes this sort of thing in roughly the same way he consumes cannabis. Every now and then, in which case the most usual method would be either eating the tablets or crushing them up in liquid and drinking it.’

‘Doesn’t sound like your usual junkie,’ Bäckström declared contentedly. ‘He’s never had to give his fingerprints to the friendly local police, he only takes drugs now and then, and he’s got the same sort of haircut that normal men have.’

‘Doubtless, Bäckström, doubtless,’ Enoksson said. ‘But on the other hand, he does seem to use both cannabis and general stimulants. As far as his fingerprints are concerned, we can’t rule out the possibility that we haven’t found his, although I personally doubt that. And then there’s the biggest problem: what he did to Linda. So I don’t think we can say that he’s that normal.’

‘Fish or fowl. That’s the question,’ Olsson said, nodding solemnly.

‘Neither, if you ask me,’ Enoksson said drily. ‘I’ve actually saved the most interesting thing till last. Oh, yes.’ He was evidently delighted when he saw the looks on the faces of his audience. ‘This’ll give you something to get stuck into.’

On the sill and frame of the window they had found traces of fibre. A pale-blue fabric which, according to the experts at the National Lab, probably came from a thin sweater. The structure of the fibre, its thickness and other properties, indicated the sort of sweater that was thin enough for someone to wear at least during the evening in the sort of weather that currently prevailed in Växjö and much of the rest of Sweden without getting heatstroke. And it was far from a common sort of fabric.

‘This is no ordinary sweater,’ Enoksson said. ‘The fibres we’re talking about are a blend, fifty per cent cashmere and fifty per cent another highly exclusive variety of wool. According to the lab, we’re talking about a top that would cost several thousand kronor in the shops. Maybe more than that if it was a particularly exclusive brand.’

‘That almost sounds like the sort of thing Linda could have been given by her father,’ Sandberg said hesitantly. ‘That couldn’t be how they got there? Your fibres, I mean.’

‘That she could have hung it out to dry, or to air?’ Enoksson said.

‘That’s what I was thinking,’ Sandberg said. ‘Typical female thinking. Ever think of that, lads?’ she asked, looking at her colleagues round the table.

‘Well, the top wasn’t found in the flat,’ Enoksson said. ‘And there were also traces of blood on a couple of the fibres we found on the windowsill. It remains to be seen if the perpetrator borrowed it from Linda or her mother, and in that case what he did with his own top, assuming he wasn’t bare-chested to start with. Elementary, my dear Watson.’ Enoksson nodded towards Olsson.

‘We ought to be able to find that out,’ Bäckström said, nodding in turn towards Rogersson. ‘And if it’s his own sweater, it sounds like the sort of thing it might be possible to track down.’

‘If he actually bought it,’ Olsson said doubtfully. ‘If we’re talking about the sort of person described by your colleagues in the CP group in their profile, then he probably stole it from somewhere.’

‘Precisely, Olsson,’ Bäckström said. ‘I quite agree with you. If he didn’t steal it, or just grab it from a washing line somewhere, he probably found it on the beach when he was on holiday in Thailand. When you’re dealing with a proper murder case, you have to make the best of things.’

‘I understand what you mean, Bäckström. I take that back,’ Olsson said with a faint smile.

And you’re humble as well, you little poof, Bäckström thought.

The first part of the search for the exclusive sweater was done by phone. First Rogersson called Linda’s mother and asked her. She was entirely sure. She had certainly never owned a top like that. Pale blue just wasn’t her colour.

What about her daughter? Had Linda ever owned a pale blue cashmere top? Her mother couldn’t recall ever having seen anything like that, although Linda had loads of clothes. To be on the safe side, she suggested that Rogersson talk to Linda’s father. If she’d been given it as a present, it was bound to have been from him.

‘A pale blue cashmere top?’ Henning Wallin said. ‘Not something I’ve ever given her. Not that I can remember, anyway. Blue was certainly her colour, but not light blue, exactly.’

The conversation ended with Henning Wallin suggesting that he would talk to his housekeeper about it. She ought to be able to say, and whether the answer was positive or negative he promised to get in touch as soon as he had spoken to her. ‘Is it important?’ he asked.

‘Could be,’ Rogersson said. ‘At this stage, most things are important.’

‘That sweater,’ Rogersson said to Bäckström an hour later.

‘I’m listening,’ Bäckström said. Right now a cold beer would be great. Who the hell could bear to talk about sweaters in this sort of heat, he thought.

‘It doesn’t look like it was Linda’s. I spoke to her dad, who spoke to his housekeeper, who called me and went on about how she’s sewn and mended and washed and ironed and folded and hung up and brushed and rubbed and scrubbed everything for Linda and her dad for the past ten years.’

‘And?’

‘She can’t recall any pale blue cashmere top ruining her life with its presence,’ Rogersson said. ‘But their household martyr does seem to have had a lot of valuable stuff to look after.’

‘What about her mum, then?’

‘Wrong colour. Completely the wrong colour for her. Not a chance,’ Rogersson said. ‘So we can forget her.’

Wrong colour? Bäckström thought. Women are completely mad. Personally he had a favourite sweater that had blue, red and green horizontal stripes. He had found it when he had been on a murder case up in Östersund a few years ago; some lazy rich bastard had left it in the hotel restaurant, and Bäckström had taken pity on it. Besides, it had been cold enough to freeze the arse off an Eskimo when he was there, even though it was only the beginning of August.

Detective Superintendent Lewin didn’t waste a thought on the presumed pale blue sweater. He was too old to run around trying to find things that way. Everyone who knew what it was really about knew that you had to differentiate between big and small, and that you had to look very carefully in order to be able to tell which was which. This business about where Linda’s mother had lived, for instance. Besides, he had the best possible help for that sort of practical search.

‘I understand exactly what you mean, Janne,’ Eva Svanström said. ‘I don’t understand why Bäckström and the others all assume this is just about Linda. I’ve thought that all along. Maybe he wanted to see the mother? I pulled up her passport photo just out of curiosity, and if she looks the way she does on the picture, I find it hard to believe she had any shortage of men in her life.’

‘Don’t let’s get carried away now... Eva,’ Lewin said, seeing as they were alone. Personally, he would rather she called him Jan than Janne regardless of whether they were alone or in company.

Most of the evidence suggested that this was about Linda, according to Lewin. Linda was the victim, and the hideous abuse that had been directed at her seemed to be aimed at her specifically. It was extremely personal, and extremely private. That her killer covered her with the sheet at the end, careful to cover her face and body, was an expression of severe guilt, angst, and the fact that he couldn’t bear to look at her.

In the world Lewin lived in, that was also a clear sign. It was the sort of thing the usual sex maniacs he had investigated never bothered with. There it was all about exposing the victim in a sexually pro-vocative way, to the limits of what was physically possible. To violate her even more after death, to shock the people who found her, and the people who would be looking for him. But mostly to give succour to their own fantasies as events unfolded, and to store memories for future use. And the pattern of behaviour shown here didn’t fit the married men, ex-husbands, and all the various categories of boyfriends who, in a fit of jealousy, drunkenness or simple rage, had attacked their girlfriends and wives, hitting and beating them to death, because then the crime scene was usually transformed into a slaughterhouse.

Then there were the details as well. Small but not uninteresting, and they all pointed to Linda rather than her mother. The mother hadn’t lived in her flat for the past month. As soon as her summer holiday began, she moved out to her cottage in the country. On the few occasions when she had been in town, she had had errands to run. Instead, Linda had lived alone in her flat. For almost three weeks in a row, with all the possibilities this opened up for meetings, contacts and ordinary coincidental encounters.

‘You just want to make absolutely sure this isn’t anything to do with the mother,’ Eva Svanström said, smiling at him in the way his mother sometimes had when he was a young boy and needed comforting.

‘Yes,’ Lewin said. ‘That would be good, actually.’

‘Okay,’ Eva said. ‘So, this is how it looks.’

Around ten years ago, at the time of her parents’ separation, Linda and her mother had left the USA and moved back to Växjö. Linda’s mother had been born and raised in Växjö, and, with the exception of the four years in the States, had lived there all her life. The same thing with her daughter. She was born in the maternity unit in Växjö Hospital. When she was six years old, she moved to the USA with her parents. Four years later, just in time for the start of the autumn school term, she moved back to Växjö with her mother and moved into the house on Pär Lagerkvists väg that her mother had received in the divorce.

Linda’s mother had been registered at that address ever since. Nor was there anything to suggest that she might have lived anywhere else, with the exception of the time she spent in her summer house out on Sirkön, which she bought the year after she returned to Sweden, and where she spent her summer holidays, weekends and other breaks.

Linda had also been registered at the same address until she reached the age of seventeen, and she attended Växjö High School. Then her father had moved back home as well, bought a large manor house south of Växjö, and just a few months later was joined there by his only daughter. During the first year Linda seemed to have lived a fairly nomadic existence, and had a room both in her mother’s flat in town and with her father out in the country, where she was registered as living. After she left school, learned to drive and got her own car, given to her by her father, she seemed to have preferred the countryside to the town, and spent less and less time staying at her mother’s.

Svanström had found no trace of ‘men’ connected to the flat, at least not in the official sense. Only Linda and her mother had ever been registered at the address in question.

‘I see,’ Lewin sighed.

‘You don’t seem very happy,’ Svanström said. ‘It would be good if you could explain why. It would make things easier for me. If I knew what you were looking for, I mean.’

‘I don’t actually know,’ Lewin said. ‘What about the others registered in the building? What about their living arrangements?’

According to Svanström, they all seemed to have lived there just as long as, or even longer than, Linda’s mother, with one exception. The only occupant who had arrived in the past ten years seemed to be Marian Gross the librarian, who had bought his flat and moved in at roughly the time the building was transferred from rented to private flats a few years ago.

‘But you’ve already turned him inside out by now,’ Svanström said. ‘Anyway, didn’t his DNA mean that he’s been eliminated from the investigation?’

‘If Gross bought his flat, that must mean that someone else sold it to him,’ Lewin said. ‘And moved out.’

‘Not on this occasion,’ Eva Svanström said. ‘Believe it or not, I’ve checked that as well, even though it took quite a while. He actually bought it from another occupant who lived there when Linda and her mother moved in, and still lives there, so the simple explanation is that she had two tenancies. I noticed that she ran some sort of accountancy business, so I’d guess that she used the flat that Gross bought as an office. It seems to be quite tricky, in purely legal terms, to use a domestic flat as an office. Especially if it’s managed by a small housing association. She must have made quite a bit of money from it as well.’

‘Margareta Eriksson,’ Lewin said suddenly.

‘That’s her name,’ Svanström said. ‘Do you know what, Janne? Sometimes I wonder what you need me for. That’s the same Margareta Eriksson who came forward in the papers, isn’t it? That story about the perpetrator trying to break into her flat the same night Linda was murdered?’

‘Yes, that’s the one,’ Lewin said. He was finally starting to feel that he was beginning to make sense of his thoughts. A bit of structure to his world.

‘Mind you, I still don’t understand what you’re looking for,’ Svanström declared.

‘Nor me, frankly,’ Lewin said. ‘Do you know what, Eva? Could you call Margareta Eriksson and ask her about it?’

‘But you still don’t know why?’ Svanström asked.

‘A complete shot in the dark,’ Lewin said with a weak smile. ‘A shot in the dark at an unknown target,’ he added.

‘Well, if it will make you happy,’ Eva said with a shrug.