Linda, As in the Linda Murder

68

Once he had finished breakfast, Lewin followed in his colleague’s footsteps, and because he hadn’t mentioned this to him each step pricked his conscience. First he paid a visit to the 92-year-old witness’s optician, to determine, once and for all, the state of her eyesight.

He was a man in his sixties, and he had been supplying the witness with glasses for the past thirty years. In total that had amounted to two new pairs of glasses and a few minor repairs, so she wasn’t exactly a big customer. The last time she had been to see him was about six years ago. The examination conducted on that occasion had shown that the glasses she had bought five years previously were still perfectly adequate. And those had been bought shortly after her eightieth birthday, and mainly because she needed new frames.

The witness was near-sighted, but she had been born with the problem and it didn’t seem to have got noticeably worse over the years. Assuming that she was wearing her glasses, and that her sight hadn’t deteriorated dramatically since her last visit, she ought to have practically normal vision, making her perfectly capable of recognizing someone at a distance of some twenty metres away from her, as Lewin asked. If she hadn’t been wearing her glasses, then she couldn’t have done so. It was out of the question. At that distance, without her glasses she could make out movement and differentiate between a person and a dog, but probably not tell a dog from a cat.

But there was a different problem with old people and their eyesight, which lay outside the area of optical medicine but was still a part of their daily life, which every conscientious practitioner had to take into account.

‘Old people’s eyesight is affected in a completely different way by their general physical and mental condition. They get a lot of dizzy spells and double vision, and they’re more sensitive to changes in the light. They can also get quite confused generally, mixing things up, before it passes and they’re back to normal again. They come to me and I try out new lenses on them and sometimes they even manage to read the bottom lines of the chart, then they come back and test the new glasses and all of a sudden they can’t even read the top line because they slept badly or have had a row with their children or something.’

‘But assuming she was the way she usually was, and was wearing her glasses, she ought to be able to see and recognize a person at that distance? Especially if it was someone she’d seen before?’

‘Yes,’ the optician agreed. ‘But then there’s the mental aspect. They get people mixed up, and think the person they see is someone they know, possibly because of some superficial similarity, and then they might describe the person they know and not the person they actually saw. I’m not a doctor, but I’ve seen and heard plenty of examples of this sort of thing over the years.’

Evidence pointing both ways, Lewin thought, sighing inwardly as a little while later he rang the doorbell of the flat where their witness lived. He had asked Eva to phone her beforehand, and hoped that was why she didn’t bother to look through the peephole before she opened the door to him.

‘My name is Jan Lewin, and I work as a detective superintendent for the National Crime police,’ Lewin said, holding up his ID and smiling his most trustworthy smile at her. She seems lively enough, he thought.

‘Come in, come in,’ she said, pointing the way with her rubber-tipped stick.

‘Thank you,’ Lewin said. And compos mentis, he thought, feeling his hopes rising.

‘I should be thanking you, superintendent,’ Mrs Rudberg said. ‘You’re not just something the cat dragged in, are you? That lass who was here before, she was just an ordinary police officer, wasn’t she?’

First they talked about her birthday, and it turned out that the witness had evidently encountered the same sort of priest as his old grandmother had. It had also taken a number of years before her parents had realized the mistake and told her.

‘It must have been when I was about to start school that my father realized the priest had written the wrong date in the register,’ she explained. ‘But by then we had got a new priest, and he didn’t want to change it now that it had been entered. So it had to stay as it was.’

For a while she had been annoyed that she was registered under the wrong month. But as she got older the extra month had mattered less, and when she reached retirement age she had even been grateful for the priest’s mistake.

‘I got an extra month of my pension,’ she explained, smiling at Lewin. ‘So I kept quiet and accepted it gratefully.’

The business about her birthday had never led to any practical problems. She had always celebrated 4 July as her birthday, and the fact that she hadn’t explained about the priest’s mistake to the female police officer she had spoken to was simply because it hadn’t even occurred to her. It was 4 July at six o’clock in the morning that she had been sitting on her balcony. Like most other days this summer, but in honour of that particular day she had taken a piece of cake out to have with her usual morning coffee.

‘I’d even laid a tray so I wouldn’t have to keep running in and out. I have to think about my stick as well, you see,’ she explained.

Which leaves one more problem, and how on earth am I going to deal with that? Lewin thought.

‘And of course now, superintendent, you’re wondering if I was wearing my glasses,’ she said, fluttering her eyelashes at him over the frames.

‘Yes,’ Lewin said with a friendly smile. ‘How are your glasses, Mrs Rudberg?’

No problems at all, according to the witness. The last thing she always did once she’d gone to bed in the evening was take off her glasses and leave them on the bedside table so she could find them easily the next morning. And the first thing she did each morning before she got out of bed was put them back on again.

‘Superintendent, what would I be doing out on the balcony without my glasses?’ she declared. ‘My word! I doubt I would have even managed to find my way there.’

Which left the man she had seen doing something to the car out in the car park. This is going like a dream, Lewin thought.

Fairly short, dark, quick and agile. In good shape, as people said these days. Good-looking, the way men used to be when she was young. ‘Mind you, in those days they didn’t have to do any of that exercising to keep their bodies in trim.’

How old was he, Lewin wondered.

The age the men who looked like that had been when she used to look at them that way when she was a few years younger than they were. Men were always a few years older, weren’t they? And that still seemed to be the case if she had understood correctly.

‘He must have been about twenty-five; thirty, perhaps,’ she concluded. ‘Mind you, nowadays I think practically everyone looks like a youngster, so he could have been a little older.’

‘And you thought he was someone you knew, Mrs Rudberg?’ Lewin prompted cautiously.

‘Yes, but I got that badly wrong.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, I must have got him confused with someone else.’

‘I see. So how...?’

‘I was talking to our caretaker the other day. He came in to help me with my fridge, it makes such a racket I can hardly sleep at night, and we talked about that car. It had evidently been stolen, because they said something about it on the radio, and I happened to mention what I had said to that policewoman, about it being him, the son, who had taken it and gone off to the country.’

‘I see,’ Lewin said, nodding encouragingly.

‘But I must have got that badly wrong,’ she repeated, ‘because he doesn’t have a son. So I must have got that completely wrong. My scythe hit a rock that made it sing, as my old father would have said.’

‘So it was actually someone else that he reminded you of?’ Lewin said.

‘Yes, it must have been. I mean, if he hasn’t got a son, then he hasn’t got a son.’

‘So your caretaker knew that your neighbour, the retired pilot who owned the car, didn’t have a son, Mrs Rudberg?’

‘If there’s anyone who knows that sort of thing, it’s him,’ the witness said firmly. ‘He knows everything about everyone who lives here. Of course he does. That pilot has two daughters. I know that for certain, and we were in complete agreement about that. And it wasn’t either of them that I saw. I’m not quite that dotty. Not yet.’

‘I appreciate that you’ve given the matter some thought, Mrs Rudberg,’ Lewin persisted. ‘You weren’t thinking of someone else who lives here, someone else you know? Or someone that you may have seen before who resembled the person you saw?’

‘No,’ the witness said, shaking her head firmly. ‘I’ve certainly given it some thought, but the only person who comes to mind is that actor. The one in Gone With the Wind. That Clark Gable, although without a moustache, of course.’

‘Clark Gable, but without a moustache,’ Lewin said with a nod.

‘Although it could hardly have been him, I suppose.’

‘No,’ Lewin said. ‘It doesn’t seem very likely.’

‘No, it doesn’t seem very likely at all,’ the witness agreed. ‘Because he ought to be the same age as me by now, and anyway, isn’t he already dead?’

‘I think so,’ Lewin said. ‘I have a feeling he died quite some time ago.’

‘So I could hardly have seen him, then.’

As Lewin walked back to the police station, the old sense of gloom had made itself felt again. The little over-stuffed flat, the family pictures, friends and relatives who belonged together and were all dead now. That special smell that’s always in older people’s homes, no matter how scrupulously clean they are kept, or no matter that their occupants might live another twenty years. A ninety-two-year-old woman who was healthy and alert for her age, and still managed to live in a flat on her own, make her own coffee, even carry a tray in one hand. No wheelchair, not even a walking frame, just the power and strength that could manage to get out on to the balcony with just a rubber-tipped stick.

Not even close to the ante-room of death that institutionalized care of the elderly had to offer all those less fortunate than his witness, many of them considerably younger than her. Linoleum floors, the television permanently stuck on the same channel, boiled fish and fruit soups, being fed with a spoon, a bed for the night with the back tilted to support a crooked back and ease tired lungs. And the only freedom on offer being an end to all of this. If you were even conscious of it being there, and that it was waiting patiently for you, utterly regardless of who you might have been when you still had a life to live.

‘He was like Clark Gable?’ Sandberg asked an hour later.

‘But without the moustache,’ Lewin said with a thin smile.

‘I actually dug out a recent picture of the pilot’s son-in-law. His name’s Henrik Johansson, thirty-eight years old. He’s the flight officer married to their younger daughter,’ Sandberg said.

‘What’s he look like, then?’

‘Not at all like Clark Gable, and you should know that you’re talking to a woman who’s seen Gone With the Wind on video several times,’ Sandberg said. ‘What do you think about a photo-fit picture? In the absence of anything else?’

‘God help us,’ Lewin said, shaking his head. Of Clark Gable? We could probably get away with just removing his moustache, Lewin thought, already feeling a bit livelier.

Olsson had asked to have a private conversation with Bäckström, the reason for which had already been divulged to Bäckström by Anna Sandberg the previous day.

‘Yes, I heard about that,’ Bäckström told him breezily. ‘It’s that crazy woman in the pink shift that I met at that meeting you invited me to. That’s the only occasion I’ve ever met her, and I dare say there won’t be another any time soon. Are you good friends, by the way?’

‘Now you mustn’t misunderstand me, Bäckström,’ Olsson said, putting up his hands in the defensive gesture that had become something of a trademark for him. ‘I just wanted to warn you, that’s all. In case you should hear any unpleasant rumours.’

‘Unfortunately I’ve had to get used to things like this over the years. Do you happen to know, Olsson, just how many of our fellow officers are currently the objects of one or more complaints from all the thugs and confused souls we’re trying to keep in check?’

‘Quite a lot, I dare say, sadly,’ Olsson said.

‘About two thousand,’ Bäckström said emphatically. ‘Fifteen per cent of the entire force, and practically all of them simply for trying to do their jobs. And do you know how many are actually convicted?’

‘Not many,’ Olsson said.

‘Nice try, Olsson,’ Bäckström said. ‘One or two each year. Less than one per thousand officers out of all the officers whose reputations those people have done their level best to ruin.’

‘Yes, it really isn’t a good situation.’ Olsson made a move to stand up.

‘I should really have a word with the union and organize a charge of false accusation.’

‘Against the alleged victim?’

‘No, against that crazy bitch in the pink shift. Anyway, I didn’t think you even had a victim. So think about whether or not we should report her. That woman in the pink shift, I mean.’ Suck on that, you little prick, he thought.

‘I don’t think that will be necessary,’ Olsson said, getting up.

‘So how did Bäckström react? Did he have anything to say in his defence?’ the county police commissioner asked five minutes later.

‘He didn’t seem to understand,’ Olsson said with a sigh. ‘He thought we should report Moa Hjärtén for making a false accusation. Says he’s thinking about talking to the union.’

‘Is that really necessary?’ the commissioner groaned. ‘By the way, have you spoken to the victim?’

‘Only over the phone,’ Olsson said.

‘So what did she say, then?’

‘She didn’t want to talk about it at all, and she’s not thinking of making an official complaint. But I’m absolutely convinced there’s something behind this.’

‘Yes, of course,’ the commissioner said. ‘There usually is, but we’re still talking about a fellow officer here, and if the victim is refusing to make a complaint I don’t really see what we can do about it.’

‘Maybe you should have a word with Bäckström’s new boss,’ Olsson suggested. ‘That Johansson.’

‘You mean Lars Martin Johansson, our new HNC?’

‘Yes, him. He’s bound to find out about it sooner or later anyway.’

‘I promise to give the matter some thought,’ the commissioner said. What’s happened to Olsson? he thought. I must have been completely wrong about the man.

That afternoon, just before he was about to head back to the hotel, Lewin’s friend in the Security Police called back to give him the details of the telephone Lewin was trying to identify.

‘You’re in luck, Jan,’ the officer said. ‘It’s a traceable mobile. Registered to Växjö Council, and if you can give me another day I’ll be able to tell you who uses it. There are several hundred staff to choose from.’

‘If you wouldn’t mind, I’d obviously be very grateful. As long as it doesn’t cause any problems for you,’ Lewin said.

No problems at all, according to his old friend. The Security Police just happened to have an excellent contact in a strategic position inside Växjö Council, so all he needed was another twenty-four hours.

‘Well, that sounds good,’ Lewin said. ‘Thanks very much indeed.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ his friend said. ‘I’ll be in touch tomorrow to let you have the name.’

‘Well, thanks very much, really,’ Lewin repeated. Maybe, maybe not, although maybe after all, he thought, and he suddenly felt the old familiar gloom again. The feeling he usually got when he thought he was in the process of working out something that would soon have very real consequences for people of flesh and blood.