Linda, As in the Linda Murder

58

‘If you ask me, the old woman’s completely dotty,’ Rogersson said the next day when the investigating team were discussing her testimony and that of the other people in the area.

‘Why do you say that?’ Olsson said. For the past few days he had been back in his place at the head of the table.

‘To start with, the pilot doesn’t have a son, he’s never had one, doesn’t want one and won’t even entertain the idea of one. All he’s got is a son-in-law. He’s a flight officer for SAS, and he’s in Australia with the pilot’s younger daughter, to whom he’s been married for years. They left Sweden on Wednesday 18 June, two and a half weeks before Linda was murdered. They’re due home about a week from now, so the kid can start school. Anyway, he got cross when I phoned and went on about his son. Wondered what the hell we were up to. He’d already explained to one of my colleagues that he had two daughters, a granddaughter and a son-in-law, but no son.’

‘The other daughter,’ Lewin said. ‘What about—’

‘Thank you, Lewin,’ Rogersson interrupted. ‘She’s thirty-seven years old, works as a lawyer in Kristianstad and for the past fifteen years has been living with her partner, who is also a lawyer and whom she met when they were both studying law in Lund.’

‘What do we know about him?’ Lewin asked.

‘Well, we know that he’s a she, and I’m sure you don’t want to hear what the father said when I began to ask him about her.’

‘Mind you, that business about the birthday is quite striking,’ Lewin persisted.

‘That’s what I thought, as did Anna, who was the one who spoke to her,’ Rogersson agreed. ‘Until we discovered that the old woman was born on 4 June, not 4 July. At least she was if we’re to believe her ID number.’

‘Maybe she was celebrating some other anniversary? Who knows, maybe she makes any excuse to have a bit of cake. The old bag’s probably one of those sugar addicts,’ Bäckström said, laughing so much his stomach was bouncing.

‘Point taken,’ Lewin said with a sigh. ‘What about the description, then?’

‘You mean the way he was so similar to the son that doesn’t exist?’ Rogersson said. ‘Well, seeing as I had nothing better to do, I’ve spoken to the old woman’s optician. He wasn’t exactly impressed, let me say. I’m no expert, but I got the impression that she’s practically blind. He also told me to remind her that she’s overdue for a check-up. She hasn’t been to see him for the past six years.’

‘I don’t think we’re going to get any further, are we? What do you think, Lewin?’ Bäckström said with a grin.

After the meeting, Eva Svanström went to Lewin’s office to console him.

‘Don’t worry about those two. Bäckström’s never been right in the head, and Rogersson drinks like a fish, so I dare say he was just hungover as usual. I don’t know how many times I’ve said this to you.’

‘You came to console me?’ Lewin said with a smile.

‘And what’s so wrong with that?’ Svanström said, sounding the way she usually did again. ‘But that’s not the only reason. I’ve got something to tell you.’

What’s so wrong with a bit of consolation? Lewin thought.

About three years ago, at roughly the same time as she moved from one flat to another in the building she lived in, and her daughter moved back to her father’s, Linda’s mother had changed her phone number. Normally people took their existing number with them when they moved the way Lotta Ericson did, but for some reason she got a new one. Ex-directory. Up until then she had been in the phone book, like most other people.

The old number had reverted to Telia, and after the usual quarantine period it had been re-allocated to one of their new customers, a female anaesthetist who had transferred from a post at the university clinic in Linköping to a better position at the hospital in Växjö. Her name was Helena Wahlberg, she was single, forty-three years old, and lived on Gamla Norrvägen, approximately half a kilometre north of the crime scene, in a part of town that was conveniently called Norr.

The old open-access number now also became ex-directory, which wasn’t so strange given the nature of the new customer’s work. Svanström had tried to get hold of her at the hospital, but it turned out that she had been on holiday for the past month. She was due back at work on Monday, and the only thing that was significant about all this — and even this was probably just an irrelevant coincidence — was that her holiday had started on Friday 4 July, the day Linda was murdered.

‘Do you want me to request a list of calls to and from her number?’ Svanström asked.

‘I think we should wait,’ Lewin said. ‘The easiest thing would be for me to call and ask her first. But there is something else I’d like to ask you to do,’ he added.

In spite of the fact that their 92-year-old witness had evidently got her birthday wrong by a whole month, Lewin still wasn’t inclined to let go of her. The explanation for this lay in his own background, which could be regarded as a common police affliction. And possibly also in his nature, although that was something that he hadn’t considered at all, even though the woman on the other side of the desk did so pretty much every time she thought about him.

‘My old grandmother — she’s dead now, but if she was still alive she’d have been about a hundred — well, according to the population register she was born on 20 February 1907, but we always used to celebrate her birthday on 23 February.’

‘Why did you do that?’

‘According to the story we told as a family, the priest was supposed to have been drunk when he was entering her name in the church register, and simply wrote the wrong date. Admittedly, it’s only a few days rather than a month, but there’s something about June and July that bothers me.’

‘It’s fairly easy to get them mixed up,’ Svanström agreed.

‘That’s why a lot of old lawyers emphasize the difference when they speak. To avoid any confusion. I remember how surprised I was the first time I heard one of them do it. We had a dotty old lecturer in criminal law at the Police Academy. His weird way of pronouncing July was pretty much the only thing he taught us. That lawyers pronounce July weirdly. Otherwise it was mainly the usual nonsense about making sure you held on to your sword tightly when you took a swing at a criminal. The fact that the police had switched to batons several years before seemed to have escaped his notice. On one occasion he devoted an entire lecture to the legal consequences of hitting someone with the edge instead of the flat of the blade, until one of us summoned up the courage to mention batons.’

‘How did he take it?’

‘He got angry.’

‘It’s probably easiest if you just ask her. The witness, I mean.’

‘Maybe I should.’ Maybe I should have a word with her optician as well, Lewin thought. The problem with officers like Rogersson, however fundamentally decent they were, was that they preferred to see reality in black and white.

When Eva got up to leave, he was suddenly struck by the elusive thought that had crossed his mind a couple of hours before.

‘One more thing,’ Lewin said. ‘Something that struck me during the meeting. What Enoksson said about anyone stealing a car in that way probably being an habitual thief. I don’t think that’s necessarily true.’

All you needed was a bit of technical expertise, he said. A car mechanic, or even just someone interested in cars, good with their hands generally. Or maybe the perpetrator picked it up from someone else. Maybe he worked in the remand system, youth custody, something like that.

‘Or the police,’ Svanström said.

‘Yes, maybe,’ Lewin agreed. ‘Although I wouldn’t have the faintest idea what to do, and I’ve been in the police for almost thirty years.’

‘Someone who knows what they’re doing, but didn’t necessarily end up in our database when they learned how to do it,’ Svanström summarized.

‘Exactly.’

‘So we’re basically talking about the exact opposite of that disgusting librarian Gross. Someone who isn’t particularly cultured.’

‘Exactly,’ Lewin repeated. Definitely not someone like Gross, he thought.

Once Svanström had left, naturally he couldn’t resist. Without having any idea that he was confirming Eva Svanström’s most recurrent thought about him, he dialled the home number of the female anaesthetist. She wasn’t yet back at work, but people were surely just as likely to come home before the end of their holiday as to wait until the very last day? At least, that was what he usually did.

‘I can’t answer right now, but if you leave your name and number, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can,’ the voice on the answer machine said.

Lewin hung up. That must have been her voice on the machine, he thought. She sounded just like a forty-something female anaesthetist. Correct, well-meaning, alert. Single, according to the population register, and an acting consultant at Växjö Hospital according to the taxation records that the conscientious Eva Svanström had dug out from their computers.