Linda, As in the Linda Murder

49 Växjö, Tuesday 5 August

The fourteen-year-old rape victim from Kalmar had survived. Her condition was described as critical but stable, and the report indicated that she would have died if her sister and her friend hadn’t shown up at the last minute and frightened the perpetrator away. It was also confirmation of what the media had suspected from the very start. That a serial killer who raped young women was on the loose in Småland. Right in the middle of idyllic, summertime Sweden.

First he had murdered Linda. A few weeks later he had attacked another woman, and the fact that he failed on that occasion was, according to the newspapers, the most likely explanation for why he had attacked a third victim just a week after that. The pressure inside him had built up to the point where the risk of getting caught was the least of his worries.

A professor in criminal psychology from Stockholm University, described as the country’s leading expert on serial killers, was able to give numerous examples of the police’s inability to identify sequences of violent crimes at an early enough stage. The police lacked perspective, staring themselves blind on details, and there were failures in their internal communications. One hand ‘couldn’t see’ what the other was doing. They didn’t pick up the whole picture, the pattern, the most obvious signs.

‘They simply don’t see that the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes,’ the professor said on the sofa of TV4’s breakfast show.

‘How do you mean?’ the presenter asked.

‘Well, that he’s naked,’ the professor clarified.

For the first time that summer the media were openly critical of the police, and the police in Växjö in particular. In spite of a wealth of evidence, they still hadn’t managed to solve the murder of Linda Wallin. Even worse: according to several anonymous police sources, they hadn’t managed to make any progress at all in the investigation. Even though a month had passed since the murder, the investigation was still stuck exactly where it had started.

The nineteen-year-old woman the perpetrator had attempted to rape the weekend before also popped up again. The police had simply refused to take her story seriously. Instead of hunting for the perpetrator they had bullied his victim, and a fourteen-year-old girl had had to pay the price for that incompetence. The editorial columns of the papers were all talking about a scandal and the team investigating the Linda murder suddenly found themselves devoting most of their time to dealing with problems that the majority of them regarded as complete fantasies.

The previous day, the county police commissioner in Kalmar had contacted his counterpart in Växjö and raised the idea of establishing a joint unit. One murder and two rapes within the space of a month, with the interruption of the most recent incident sadly suggesting that the perpetrator might well strike again soon. The county police commissioner in Växjö was dubious, but promised to raise the matter with the leader of the preliminary police investigation into the Linda murder and get back to him.

Detective Superintendent Olsson raised the matter as the first item at the morning meeting on Tuesday, and declared himself willing to consider various options.

‘What do you think?’ he asked, looking around those present. ‘Personally, I’m starting to lean strongly towards the possibility that the same man was involved in both rapes, since the descriptions given by the witnesses are almost identical.’

‘What about the Linda case, then?’ Bäckström asked grouchily. ‘Did he do that as well?’

‘The problem there is that we don’t have a description,’ Olsson said carefully.

‘Yes, but that’s pretty much the only thing we don’t have,’ Bäckström said. ‘And we’re soon going to find the man who did it. If there’s anyone here who seriously believes that Linda would have let that tattooed thug into her flat at three o’clock in the morning, would they please raise their hand?’

‘Sorry to interrupt,’ Lewin said, clearing his throat carefully. ‘What about the latest victim? Did they find any traces of semen?’

‘Yes,’ Sandberg said.

‘In that case, it will soon be fairly obvious whether there’s a connection to Linda,’ Lewin pointed out.

‘Yes, it will,’ Sandberg agreed, already seeming a bit brighter.

‘As far as the two rapes are concerned, I don’t really see how we could help our colleagues in Kalmar, other than letting their witnesses look at the same photographs that we’ve shown our own victim. If they haven’t already done that, of course,’ Lewin said, clearing his throat again.

‘It’s already been arranged,’ Sandberg said, now even happier.

‘Well, then. That all sounds splendid,’ Lewin said. ‘Sounds like a textbook example of collaboration between different forces.’

‘But what do you think personally, Lewin?’ Olsson persisted. ‘About whether there’s any connection, I mean?’

‘I don’t usually like to give an opinion on things like that,’ Lewin said. ‘But, since you’re asking, I don’t think the man who murdered Linda is the same man who raped that poor girl in Kalmar, and that will be made clear when our colleagues in Kalmar get their DNA results. I don’t think we need concern ourselves with any other possible connections.’

‘Well, let’s hope so,’ Olsson said, shaking his head anxiously. ‘I sincerely hope that you’re right.’

At the end of the meeting, he directed Sandberg, Salomonson, von Essen, Adolfsson and a couple of others to begin work at once, in collaboration with their colleagues in Kalmar, on finding out if there were any links between the Linda murder, the attempted rape in Växjö and the rape in Kalmar. And in the meantime he would contact the VICLAS unit and the CP group to make sure that they didn’t neglect the analytical angle.

Once the afflicted had gone off to hunt for possible links and relative calm had descended again, Bäckström mustered his remaining troops.

‘Well, then,’ he said. ‘How are things going with the list of DNA samples? Have we got enough cotton-buds?’

Lewin returned to his office, and was soon joined by Eva Svanström.

‘The information about the mother’s phone numbers will take a few days. I’ve spoken to Telia, and the files they’ve got immediate access to only go back a couple of years,’ Svanström said.

‘But the information’s there somewhere?’ Lewin asked, suddenly feeling the old anxiety again.

‘Of course,’ Svanström said. ‘But the person I spoke to said it would take a few days to dig it out.’

‘Oh, well,’ Lewin said. A few days isn’t the end of the world, and it’s probably completely irrelevant anyway, he thought. Like most shots in the dark.