Linda, As in the Linda Murder

93

In the middle of the week Jan Lewin and Eva Svanström left them. They had done their bit and were no longer needed. Not in Växjö, anyway. On the way up to Stockholm Lewin sat there trying to summon the courage to suggest to Eva that it was high time they got their relationship sorted out. That he should divorce his wife and she her husband. That they should move in together. That they should start planning a future together. High time, at least for him, because his life was getting shorter quickly now.

It never got said, and considering what was going through Eva Svanström’s head, perhaps that was just as well. As soon as she got back to Stockholm she was planning to make a real effort to sort out her marriage, and to thank Jan Lewin for their time together. In hindsight, it had gone on for far too many years, but each one of those days with him had made the years bearable. But how do you explain that? she thought. When your heart stops beating and all that’s left in your chest is a black hole that you can’t even bear to look into. Still less to talk about what you find there.

No memories before he started school. A mother he refused to talk about. An adoptive father resting under a gravestone that he didn’t even think it worth paying a visit to in order to piss on it. An unshakeable conviction that he hadn’t harmed Linda. The very thought that he might have done was unbearable, therefore he couldn’t have done so.

Six more interviews on this subject, the last four of them attended by the prosecutor. On one occasion he had been surrounded by three women who took it in turns to talk to him: Katarina Wibom, Anna Holt, and Anna Sandberg.

‘Three against one,’ Månsson declared, even if his gallows humour and smile seemed extremely forced.

‘We were under the impression that you preferred the company of women,’ Katarina Wibom said. ‘The more the merrier, we assumed.’

There was still the black hole, in which Bengt Månsson — according to their forensic evidence — must have spent the hour or so in which he raped, tortured and strangled Linda Wallin. And the car that he stole an hour or so later, to get away from there and leave it all behind him, was of limited judicial interest.

‘A black hole,’ Anna Holt summarized.

‘Plus forensic evidence amount to something like a hundred and twenty per cent certainty,’ Katarina Wibom added.

‘If only he’d just denied it outright,’ Holt said. ‘Or at least tried the story of the sex game that got out of hand.’ Well, you can’t have everything, she thought.

On the afternoon of Friday 5 September Knutsson and Thorén left Växjö as well. Other murder victims were queuing up for their services. And the piles that were mounting up on their desks in Stockholm needed to be dealt with. Being both polite and well brought up, they said goodbye to Detective Superintendent Bengt Olsson before they left.

‘Thanks for having us,’ Knutsson said.

‘If things go badly, we might meet again,’ Thorén said. ‘Well, you know what I mean, Bengt,’ he added apologetically.

‘I understand exactly,’ Olsson said with a smile. ‘Without you, I’m sure we’d have had trouble solving this one. Mind you, I suppose we’d have found him sooner or later thanks to his DNA.’

‘Without us, Olsson and little Månsson would probably have moved in together,’ Knutsson mused in the car on the way up to Stockholm.

‘And lived happily ever after,’ Thorén agreed.

‘I wonder what’s going to happen to Bäckström,’ Knutsson said.

‘Bäckström will manage. He always does,’ Thorén said.