Linda, As in the Linda Murder

52 Växjö, Wednesday 6 August

While the team investigating the Linda murder were having their usual morning meeting, Detective Superintendent Olsson marched in and announced that their colleagues in Kalmar had caught their rapist. The manager of an immigration centre outside Nybro had recognized one of his charges from the description given on local radio. He had phoned the police in Kalmar immediately, but they were already on their way. They had received the test results from the National Forensics Lab an hour before, and for once they were fortunate enough for the sample to match one of the 0.05 per cent of the country’s male population whose DNA was already in their register.

A seventeen-year-old asylum-seeker from Moldova had arrived in Sweden a month before. A sample of his DNA had been taken just in case he got up to any mischief during the months that it usually took for a deportation decision to be made. Now he was sitting in one of the cells inside Kalmar police station. Denying everything, according to the interpreter, but at least now he would get to stay in Sweden longer than almost anyone else with the same background. He was innocent of Linda’s murder. His DNA profile didn’t match.

‘Of course, we all suspected that,’ Olsson declared. ‘But I’d put money on him being behind our attempted rape.’ He gave an encouraging nod towards Anna Sandberg.

All six officers who had been detailed to work with the Kalmar Police and follow up the rape case were now restored to the investigative team. The work that remained could be finished off in the usual way with the telephone, internal police internet and fax. There were more important things for them all to be doing.

‘So we’ll proceed on a broad front, relentlessly,’ Olsson said. ‘By the way, how are we getting on with our DNA samples?’

Beyond all expectation, according to Olsson’s colleagues. They had now passed six hundred voluntary samples, smashing the old record. Four hundred of these had already been eliminated from the investigation.

‘We’re working along two lines,’ Knutsson said with a quick glance at Lewin. ‘We’re trying to get people who live in the vicinity of the crime scene, and we’re also trying to find people who fit the CP group profile and sample them systematically.’

‘So there’s certainly no question that we’re working randomly,’ Thorén clarified.

‘Well, sooner or later he’ll get caught in the net,’ Olsson said, looking confident.

Over their habitual beer back at the hotel, Rogersson was able to tell Bäckström that their former boss had now found a new placement.

‘Huddinge. Forensic psychology in Huddinge?’ Bäckström suggested, having been to the hospital several times over the years in the course of his duties.

‘Ulleråker,’ Rogersson replied. ‘Apparently he comes from somewhere round there, so it makes sense for him to be close to his wife and kids. Apparently he did his degree in Uppsala.’

‘So how’s he getting on?’ Bäckström asked curiously.

According to Rogersson’s source, things were going very well. By his second day there Nylander had been entrusted with certain responsible tasks, and now pushed the patients’ book trolley around the various wards.

‘Apparently he’s happy as a pig in shit,’ Rogersson said.

Bäckström contented himself with a nod of agreement. Wonder who’s looking after Brandklipparen? he thought. Why am I wondering that? Oh, what the hell.

‘Cheers, mate,’ he said, raising his beer glass. ‘And cheers to Chinny as well,’ he added. Nylander was quite an entertaining bloke really, and he felt he had to say something.

Thursday’s Dagens Nyheter included a long essay by university librarian Marian Gross, which the paper also picked up in its news pages and editorial, even though the same article had been refused on various grounds by the Småland Post in Växjö a few days before. Gross was upset, partly about the incompetent manner in which the police were managing the investigation into Linda’s murder and partly on a purely personal level, because of the extreme abuse they had subjected him to.

Without any concern for himself and the risks he might be exposing himself to, he had volunteered as a witness to help the police. Anything else was out of the question, as it would be for every normal, functional human being living in a democracy under the rule of law. Himself a refugee from Poland during the time of the Soviet empire, he if anyone was well aware of what it was like to live in a dictatorship. He also had a personal involvement. He had known both the victim and her mother. Both of them delightful people, and the best neighbours you could wish for, according to Gross. Because there were strong reasons to suppose that he was the only person to have seen Linda’s killer and be able to give a description of him, the way the police had treated him was both inexplicable and deeply insulting.

On two occasions they had used force to enter his home and drag him off to the police station, they had made insulting racist remarks, they had subjected him to drawn-out interrogations, and forced him to provide a DNA sample even though they didn’t have a shred of evidence against him. And afterwards they had the gall to claim that he had provided the sample voluntarily and at his own request.

When the results of the test were known, it had taken him and his legal representative numerous telephone calls and letters before the police had deigned to tell him that he had been discounted from the investigation. In other words, that he had nothing to do with Linda’s murder. Which had been obvious to him and every intelligent human being from the start, but not to the police in Växjö and their henchmen from National Crime in Stockholm.

Nor was Gross the only person who had been maltreated. A large article in the news section of the same paper revealed that a senior source in the police had told them that in connection with the Linda investigation, DNA samples had been collected from almost a thousand men in the Växjö district. The great majority of these were ordinary, decent, hard-working individuals. All of the test results which had been received back so far had proved, not unexpectedly, that the donors were innocent.

Three of them had been interviewed by the paper, and one of the three who had voluntarily provided a DNA sample was, remarkably, a woman. All three of them were unhappy, and the voluntary nature of the collection that the police kept talking about didn’t match their own experiences. None of them had thought they had any other option, to put it simply, and so as not to attract further harassment they had chosen to do as the police requested. But to suggest there was anything voluntary about it was a very poor joke.

Most upset of all was the woman, because she had no idea what it was all about. Everyone knew by now that the person who killed Linda had to be a man, so what the police wanted with her DNA was a mystery. At least it was to her. The same question had obviously been fired at the press officer for the Växjö Police, but she had declined to comment. Those in charge of the investigation into the murder of Linda Wallin would not be commenting on any of the steps that had been taken. In purely general terms, that would affect the nature of their work, and in the worst-case scenario it could jeopardize or even ruin a potentially successful investigation.

The expert the paper turned to instead was not inhibited by these police restrictions. According to him there was only one reasonable explanation. The woman who had ‘volunteered’ to be tested probably had a son whose DNA the police were interested in, but evidently hadn’t been able to get hold of. According to the woman herself, this much was actually true. She did have a son, but how he could possibly help them to solve Linda’s murder was, if possible, even more of a mystery to her than her own involvement had been. According to his mother, he had never hurt a fly in his whole life, and also happened to have been living in Thailand for the past two years.

‘I just don’t think the police know what they’re doing,’ she said at the end of the long interview.

Sadly she didn’t seem to be alone in this opinion. The editorial of the Dagens Nyheter recognized the sweet smell of injustice and could also see clear signs of the same confusion and desperation that had characterized the police hunt for the murderer of Prime Minister Olof Palme some twenty years before. Perhaps this wasn’t so strange, really, seeing that several of the officers sent from the National Crime Unit to investigate Linda’s murder had also played an active part in that investigation as well.

The Kalmar paper, the Barometer, also dealt with the Linda case in its editorial, albeit from a slightly different perspective from that of their colleagues in the capital city. According to the Barometer, this was fundamentally about a clash of two police cultures. On one side were the Växjö Police, with their local knowledge and contacts, knowing their Pappenheimers, preferring to work on the details and investigate things thoroughly. On the other side were their colleagues from National Crime, who lived in a computerized world, were used to practically unlimited resources, and were far from opposed to attacking problems on as broad a front as possible.

The Barometer also appeared to have sources inside the police. According to one of them, tensions within the investigative team had arisen at a fairly early stage, and this was obviously not beneficial to the investigation, regardless of who was right or wrong. To conclude: they were worried, although it was still too early to throw in the towel, and with luck the perpetrator would eventually be found, even though it was now over a month since Linda had been murdered.

That day the morning meeting of those leading the investigation went on right up to lunch. Most of what they discussed was what they had read in the papers that day. Detective Superintendent Olsson had even asked about the Palme investigation. Admittedly, he was asking purely out of personal curiosity, and it certainly wasn’t intended as criticism. But none the less...

‘Well, Bäckström, I dare say you were involved, of course,’ he said, for some reason.

‘Yes,’ Bäckström said, with all the authority of someone who had worked on murder cases for almost all of his police life. ‘The problem was that none of the people in charge listened to what I said.’

‘I conducted a few interviews,’ Rogersson said with a shrug. ‘And if you gentlemen will excuse me, I’ve got several more waiting for my attention now as well.’ Then he gave a curt nod and walked out.

‘I was there as well,’ Lewin said. ‘Which probably isn’t so strange, seeing as pretty much everyone working in crime in Stockholm in those days got caught up in the Palme investigation one way or another. And no one listened to me either, if anyone here is wondering.’ Then he too excused himself and left the room.

But Bäckström didn’t have any choice. He was left sitting there, watching as yet another morning of his valuable time ran into the sand, until he was finally able to put an end to the nonsense and make sure that at least he got a bite to eat.

Rogersson had evidently not only been conducting interviews. He was already sitting in the canteen when a grouchy Bäckström arrived at the same table with the dish of the day and a low-alcohol beer in the absence of the real thing.

‘Are you sitting comfortably?’ Rogersson asked as soon as Bäckström had sat down.

‘Yes.’

‘All hell’s broken loose up in Stockholm,’ Rogersson said, leaning forward across the table, lowering his voice and nodding excitedly at Bäckström.

‘Don’t tell me. Chinny’s turned up with his little book trolley in HNC’s office on the eleventh floor?’ Bäckström said as he spread plenty of butter on a stale slice of white bread.

‘I spoke to one of the lads at work,’ Rogersson said. ‘Do you know who’s taking over from Chinny?’

‘No. How the hell would I know that?’

‘Johansson,’ Rogersson said. ‘Lars Martin Johansson. You know, the one the uniforms call the Butcher of Ådalen.’

‘You mean that Lapp bastard? Fucking hell, that can’t be true?’

‘Reliable source,’ Rogersson said.

And also a remarkable source, considering that the government meeting at which the acting head of the Security Police, Lars Martin Johansson, had been appointed as the new head of the National Crime Unit just an hour ago was still going on, and not even the most well-informed journalist had the faintest notion of his elevation, which would be made public in a couple of hours’ time when the press release from the Justice Department was distributed.

On Friday evening Bäckström gathered his core team for dinner at the hotel. They started in Bäckström’s room, to be able to discuss the case in peace and quiet, and just for once Lewin, Knutsson and Thorén had all said yes to Bäckström’s generous offer of a beer. Little Svanström didn’t drink beer, but she was perfectly capable of going to her room for a glass of the white wine from the bottle she evidently kept in the minibar.

‘Then at least I can keep you company,’ she said.

Bäckström was furious. He wasn’t the sort who was prepared to take a heap of crap and put up with a load of backstabbing from a bunch of hillbilly cops who were too cowardly to say it to his face. Several times that day he had thought about going up to the police commissioner’s office and banging his fists on his desk.

‘With all due respect, Bäckström, I don’t think that would be particularly constructive,’ Lewin said.

‘Really?’ Bäckström said. Bloody traitor, he thought.

‘I’m inclined to agree with Lewin,’ Rogersson said, even though it was Bäckström’s beer he was guzzling his way through. ‘Anyway, as soon as we get the bastard behind bars, the talk will stop.’

Another one, Bäckström thought.

‘It was someone she knew,’ Lewin said. ‘Someone she let in of her own free will, because she liked him, and I’m also pretty sure that she had sex with him of her own free will, at least to start with. Until it got out of hand.’

‘So where do we find him?’ Bäckström asked. In one of your bastard constructs, he thought.

‘We’re going to find him,’ Lewin said. ‘There can’t be that many to choose from, can there? Sooner or later we’re going to find him.’

Then they went down to the restaurant to have dinner, and because Bäckström had started to thaw out he even managed to persuade the others that they should have another drink before the meal.

‘The schnapps is on me,’ he said, having already worked out how to deal with that little problem without having to surrender any of his hard-earned cash.

After that there were several more. Mostly for him and Rogersson, of course, but even Lewin, of all people, fell into line and had a couple. Hans and Fritz acquitted themselves reasonably well before they eventually headed out into town, and this time they evidently weren’t thinking of enjoying the films on offer in Växjö.

Bäckström stayed in the bar together with Rogersson, and when they finally staggered back to their rooms for some well-deserved rest they were both fairly far gone. Bäckström had trouble with the plastic key to his room, but Rogersson had helped him and made sure he got in.

‘Do you want one?’ Bäckström said, gesturing in the direction of the minibar.

‘I think I’ve had enough,’ Rogersson said. ‘I know, there’s something I meant to say.’

‘I’m listening,’ Bäckström said, as he kicked off his shoes and lay down on his side to save time before he fell asleep.

‘One of those bastard reporters called and had a go about us sitting here watching porn films all night,’ Rogersson said. ‘Do you know anything about that, Bäckström?’

‘Not the foggiest,’ Bäckström muttered. What the hell’s he going on about? he thought. Porn films? Now?

‘Nor me,’ Rogersson said.

‘So what did you tell him?’ Bäckström muttered.

‘I told him to go to hell, of course. What would you have done?’

‘Told him to go to hell, of course,’ Bäckström said. ‘What do you think about getting a bit of sleep?’

On Sunday 10 August, Linda Wallin’s family buried her in the presence of her parents, her two half-brothers from her father’s previous marriage, and twenty or so other relatives and close friends. No journalists or police, however. Detective Superintendent Olsson had been sharply rebuked by Linda’s father when he had called and offered their services. He had already made his own arrangements. The funeral service took place in the church where Linda had been confirmed seven years before, and she was buried in the adjoining cemetery, in the plot her father had bought on his return to Sweden for himself and coming generations. His own grief was already boundless, with no beginning or end, so the fact that his only daughter had ended up there before him could scarcely make it any worse.