Linda, As in the Linda Murder

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In May that same year, during the now annual police conference in the Älvsjö exhibition centre on the outskirts of Stockholm, Detective Superintendent Bengt Olsson gave a well-received lecture on the main theme of the conference: conflicts between different cultures of policing. He took his illustrations from his experiences as head of the preliminary police investigation into the Linda murder.

On one side, he himself and his colleagues from the Växjö Police. They had limited resources, but a lot of local knowledge and a wealth of practical experience. On the other side, officers from the National Crime Unit, who never needed to worry about costs, and possibly as a result of this preferred to attack problems on as broad a front as possible.

Obviously, there had been certain tensions between these two groups. This was perfectly natural, and nobody’s fault, according to Olsson, because they lived in different worlds and had been raised in different cultural traditions and beliefs. They had certainly been able to learn a great deal from each other, and he personally would like to point out the valuable contribution made to the work of the Växjö Police by the CP group, as well as National Crime’s remarkable achievement when it came to registering the vast amount of paperwork generated by the case.

But in the end, Olsson remained firmly convinced that it was local knowledge that had been the decisive factor in the apprehension of the perpetrator. This needed to be taken into account in future, when consideration was given to how best to reinforce the resources of local and regional police authorities in connection with investigations into very serious violent crimes, and ought thus to form the basis for a new way of organizing things.

After the lecture Lars Martin Johansson had gone up and thanked Olsson. Not just on his own behalf, but on behalf of many other officers. Seldom had so many police officers had reason to thank one single fellow officer for talking so much shit in so short a space of time, Johansson declared in his very politest manner. And if Olsson ever needed help solving any more blindingly obvious crimes in future, he needn’t bother to consider troubling Johansson and his colleagues.