Linda, As in the Linda Murder

47

The peace and tranquillity came to an abrupt end just after lunchtime, and the gentle search for meaningful structures and a pale blue sweater suddenly transformed into something completely different. Raised voices, people running down corridors, doors slamming, von Essen and Adolfsson suddenly showing up in the investigation’s office with holsters, weapons and tense faces, taking Sandberg and Salomonson away with them, getting an unmarked police car out of the garage and putting the blue light on top as soon as they emerged on to the street, heading towards Kalmar as fast as they could.

Two hours earlier a rape had taken place on an island called Björnö, ten kilometres north of Kalmar, and unlike their own week-old attempted rape case there wasn’t the slightest doubt that this one was the real thing, and the very worst sort. The victim was a fourteen-year-old girl. Together with her sister, who was two years older, and a friend of her sister’s of the same age, after breakfast she had gone down to the beach to sunbathe and swim.

After an hour or so on the beach the fourteen-year-old victim had set off to buy ice-cream and soft drinks from a nearby kiosk. Hardly a surprise, seeing as she was youngest. When she was heading through the strip of woodland along the shore, the perpetrator had suddenly attacked her from behind, pulled her into the undergrowth, beaten her half unconscious, and raped her. When she didn’t come back after half an hour her older sister and her friend started to get worried and set off to find her. Hardly a surprise either, after the Linda murder and all the coverage in the media. After just one hundred metres they had found the younger sister. The perpetrator was sitting astride her. They had started screaming and the perpetrator had run off.

Half an hour later the victim was on her way to hospital in Kalmar, the police had arrived, the crime scene had been cordoned off and they had started questioning the first witnesses. A dog patrol was on its way, expected to be there within fifteen minutes. In short, there was a great deal of activity, and the police patrols that were heading into the area also had a decent description to go on. According to both the older sister and her friend, the man they were looking for was remarkably similar to the man described by the girl in Växjö just a week before. They had noticed his tattoos in particular. Thick blue swirls, which might be snakes or possibly dragons, on both arms, from his shoulders down to his hands.

‘This doesn’t feel right at all,’ Anna Sandberg said when she and her colleagues stepped inside Kalmar police station, thinking mainly about her own case in Växjö, which she had decided to write off as a fictitious report as recently as that morning.

‘You mean the tattoos?’ Salomonson said.

‘Yes,’ Anna said. ‘It doesn’t feel right at all.’

‘Don’t get hung up on that,’ Adolfsson said consolingly. ‘Every self-respecting thug has tattoos like that these days. Their bodies usually look like old Oriental rugs.’

‘It’s all sorted now, so you can relax, Janne,’ Svanström said, waving a bundle of papers encouragingly at Lewin as he sat slumped in his chair behind a desk groaning with piles of entirely different papers.

‘I’m all ears,’ Lewin said, leaning back in his chair.

‘It wasn’t quite as straightforward as I thought,’ Eva Svanström said. ‘According to what Margareta Eriksson told me a short while ago, this is what happened, and she seems to know what she’s talking about. Besides, she’s also chair of the management committee.’

About three years previously, more or less at the same time as the transfer from rented flats to a residents’ association was being concluded, Margareta Eriksson had sold her flat on the first floor to Marian Gross, who moved into the building. At the same time she bought the flat at the top of the building where she now lived from her neighbour, Lotta Ericson, Linda’s mother. And finally Linda’s mother had moved down to the ground floor into the flat that she had lived in ever since, the flat where her daughter was murdered almost a month ago. That flat had originally been office premises, then had been sublet, and in the end had stood empty while the transfer to a residents’ association was going on. And it was owned by Linda’s mother and not the association.

‘Margareta Eriksson evidently wanted more space, even though she’s single,’ Svanström said. ‘She wanted a couple of rooms as an office for her accountancy business, and she had also sold her house in the country and had quite a bit of antique furniture that she wanted to keep, and needed more space for.’

‘While Lotta Ericson was happy with a smaller flat because her daughter had moved out,’ Lewin said.

‘Exactly,’ Svanström said. ‘So what do you need me for, then?’ she said with a smile.

‘There are actually a couple more things,’ Lewin said.

‘I might have guessed,’ Svanström said. ‘If we take it from the beginning: if you’re wondering whether Margareta Eriksson with a k and two s’s and Lotta Ericson with a c and one s are related, the answer’s no.’

‘So you’ve worked that out?’ Lewin said.

‘It wasn’t exactly difficult,’ Eva Svanström said. ‘I realized that when I looked into the details of the way they had moved flats. Margareta Eriksson spells Eriksson with a k and two s’s, the normal spelling, or at least the most common, and that’s been her name since she got married. Lotta Ericson, on the other hand, was originally called Liselotte Eriksson, with a k and two s’s. Full name Liselotte Jeanette Eriksson. When she married she became Liselotte Wallin Eriksson, and when she moved to the USA she changed the spelling to Ericson with a c and one s. She’s always been known as Lotta, ever since she was a child. When she got divorced and moved back home she got rid of the Wallin, then a year or so later she applied to change her name. For the past eight years her full name, according to the official register, is Lotta Liselotte Jeanette Ericson.’

‘I see,’ Lewin said.

‘You think the perpetrator rang on the wrong door at first?’ Svanström said.

‘Yes, I was starting to wonder. Because of what Margareta Eriksson said in the paper, and the fact that she and Linda’s mother have the same surname. But it’s actually thanks to you. You were the one who said it could have been an old flame popping up again.’

‘To meet Linda,’ Svanström said. ‘And he got it wrong and rang on the door of the flat they used to live in. Are you sure about that? She wasn’t exactly eighteen years old then, was she? When her mum lived on the top floor, I mean.’

‘To meet Linda, or Linda’s mother, or both of them. I really don’t know any more,’ Lewin said, shuffling in his chair. ‘But it probably doesn’t matter.’

‘If I was going to show up at the home of an old flame... in the middle of the night after three years... I think I’d probably try to call first,’ Eva Svanström said.

‘Telephones. That’s actually the next thing I was going to ask you to do,’ Lewin said. ‘I think we should find out if Lotta Ericson has changed her number.’

‘Now that we’ve already got started.’

‘Exactly,’ Lewin said. ‘Exactly.’ What’s wrong with another shot in the dark? he thought.

‘What do you think about that rape in Kalmar?’ Bäckström asked as he stuck his nose into Rogersson’s office.

‘Bloody awful business,’ Rogersson said.

‘Has it got anything to do with us, or with Linda, I mean?’

‘Not the slightest.’

‘Then you think exactly the same as me.’

‘I’ll just have to try to live with that,’ Rogersson said with a grin.

‘I asked Hans and Fritz as well. Separately, just to make sure.’

‘And?’

‘Hans didn’t think there was a connection but still thought it sounded interesting. He suggested that we ought to talk to our colleagues in the VICLAS unit.’

‘And what about Fritz?’ Rogersson asked.

‘He didn’t think there was a connection, but we should probably follow it up, and maybe have a word with our colleagues in VICLAS.’

‘How exciting. Where do they get it all from?’

‘Then I asked Lewin too,’ Bäckström said.

‘And what did he think?’

‘Do you want his exact words?’

‘Of course.’

‘With the proviso that Rogersson had only heard a description of the Kalmar case over the phone from officer Sandberg, he still thought it highly unlikely that the perpetrator was the same one as in the Linda case.’

‘Sounds like Lewin,’ Rogersson said. ‘On to something else entirely. What do you think about giving up on this and heading back to the hotel to squeeze a couple of cold beers before dinner?’

‘I think that’s an excellent proposal,’ Bäckström said.

‘Turn on the news on TV4,’ Rogersson said when they were sitting in Bäckström’s hotel room two hours and two cold beers later.

‘What for?’ Bäckström said in surprise, as he reached for the remote.

‘I thought I might check to see if my office is still in one piece,’ Rogersson said.

‘What a fucking story,’ Bäckström said five minutes later as he switched the television off. ‘The windows those crazy fuckers blew out were the ones to Chinny’s operations centre. Chinny must be mad if he agreed to an exercise like that.’

‘I spoke to the lads at work this afternoon,’ Rogersson said. ‘They thought the same as you. And that was where the shoe was chafing.’

‘Oh, so that’s it,’ Bäckström said.

‘What a fucking story,’ he repeated after another five minutes.

‘Supposed to have been just like the Grand Hotel in Lund,’ Rogersson said. ‘Seems he’s got a taste for bathroom mirrors.’

‘Or he got it all wrong. Maybe he’s just trying to commit suicide. With that fucking chin it can’t be easy for him, after all. Maybe he just can’t quite get it together.’

‘How do you mean?’ Rogersson said.

‘Every time he looks in the mirror he fires a bullet at his forehead, only he keeps aiming at the mirror,’ Bäckström said.