Another Time, Another Life (11 page)

Jarnebring and Holt thanked her and went to a nearby restaurant to get some food in their stomachs themselves. While they were waiting, Holt leafed through the papers they had received from the conference organizer.

“Well,” Jarnebring said, grinning, “find anything interesting?”

“The chairman gives a welcome, the head of legal affairs at the labor ministry reports on some developing trends in Swedish labor law during the eighties, the secretary of the labor law committee reports on the requested oversight of the Codetermination Act—”

“Thanks, thanks,” Jarnebring interrupted. “I understand exactly why he left before lunch.”

“Lunch, yes,” said Holt. “For lunch there were veal roulades with boiled potatoes and lingonberries. And a vegetarian alternative for those who wanted it.”

“Veal roulades can be damn good,” said Jarnebring, who five minutes earlier had ordered beef patties with fried onions and felt how his stomach was growling precariously. “Are there any interesting names on the list of presenters and attendees?”

“Besides the already mentioned head of legal affairs and the secretary of the labor law committee, both men of course, we actually have a female lawyer who lectured on a recently concluded case in the Labor Court as well as a whole pile of ombudsmen from every nook and cranny … and Kjell Eriksson as an invited guest from TCO.”

“Good, we’ll deal with that later. Let’s not talk with our mouths full,” Jarnebring decided, catching sight of a waiter who had a steaming plate in each hand and his eyes trained on their table.

Over coffee they talked about other things. The list of who had been at the conference did not seem particularly exciting, and regardless of that any further research could wait until the excellent Gunsan had looked up the names on the police department’s computer. Instead Jarnebring brought up Holt’s somewhat bewildering smoking habits.

“I’ve never smoked,” said Holt, shaking her head when Jarnebring asked the question. “Why should I do that? It’s pure craziness to smoke.”

“So the ciggies you offer are just a tactical instrument in police work,” Jarnebring marveled. “Something you learned at a course when you were working with the felt slippers in Building B?”

“You might put it that way,” said Holt. “Although it was not in a course. It must have been something I saw on a detective show or something like that. Isn’t there anything you use when you’re going to talk with people you meet on the job?”

“No,” said Jarnebring, trying out his wolf grin. “I don’t meet any people on the job. I only meet crooks. Plus a loaded Joe Six-Pack or two, and they’re often the worst to deal with.”

“What do you do when you want to develop a rapport with them?” Holt asked curiously.

“Scare the shit out of them,” said Jarnebring. “And then when I’m nice to them they look like they’ve gotten a whole carton of cigarettes.” Jarnebring nodded and did not appear at all dissatisfied with his approach. “Cheap and good, and it saves time too.”

“That’s the difference between you and me,” said Holt. “Not even if I wanted to, which I don’t, would I be able to do it like that.”

“Feminine wiles,” said Jarnebring.

“No,” said Holt. “I’m just that way. It’s nothing I’ve chosen.”

Like I believe that, thought Jarnebring.

“I’m a bad person myself, so what do you think about trying to make glue out of the culprit we’re looking for,” said Jarnebring, looking at his watch.

“Track down and arrest the perpetrator,” said Holt. “Sounds like an excellent idea.”

When Wiijnbladh finally left the medical examiner’s office in Solna he was worried, agitated, and confused. The first thing he did when he sat down at his desk was to call his old friend Dr. Engel to find out how he was doing.

Under the circumstances, well, according to the patient himself. Wiijnbladh told him about the unfortunate meeting with his colleague Birgit—“simply Birgit”—and the serious concerns for the progress of the investigation he had subsequently felt. Unfortunately the more he thought about his concerns the more serious they looked, and it was
even more gratifying to find that Milan completely shared both his perception and his apprehensions.

“You are completely right,” Engel agreed. “She is not sane. She is crazy. She lives with other women. She is a fucking dyke. She is totally lacking in judgment. She is—”

“If you want I can bring the documents over and see you,” Wiijnbladh interrupted cautiously.

Which he did. Half an hour later he was sitting with Dr. Engel in his pleasant bachelor’s pad on Sveavägen, analyzing the particular circumstances of Bureau Director Eriksson’s woeful demise only twenty hours earlier. Just as Wiijnbladh had suspected all along, Engel shared his view of how it had happened down to the slightest detail. Translated into comprehensible Swedish, in any event, according to the doctor’s opinion—based on science, common sense, and proven experience—the victim was “a typical closet gay who picked up a big, strong and above all very tall, violence-prone bum boy who stabbed him from behind with one of his own kitchen knives.”

In addition Engel had made a completely unique, independent contribution to the investigation that not even Wiijnbladh himself had thought of.

“You said him Eriksson lived Rodmansgatan op by ze church?” Engel asked, squinting sharply at Wiijnbladh.

“Exactly,” said Wiijnbladh. “At the corner at Karlavägen.”

“Hommelgarden,” Engel said emphatically.

“Hommelgarden?” What does he mean? thought Wiijnbladh.

“Hommelgarden where all ze bum boys go pick up closet gays. Rodmansgatan is right in the vicinity.”

“You mean Humlegården,” said Wiijnbladh, suddenly feeling the same familiar excitement he had felt so many times before when a breakthrough in an investigation was near at hand. Why didn’t we think of that? he thought.

“An interesting thought you have there, Milan,” said Wiijnbladh carefully, because he was reluctant to relinquish anything unnecessarily.

“It vas nothink,” said Dr. Engel modestly. “Dat’s my treat.”
After his nourishing lunch in town, Bäckström spent the remainder of the afternoon in peace and quiet, going through the victim’s apartment on Rådmansgatan. It was an interesting experience in a number of ways, and productive in at least two. Bäckström was no expert on interior decorating, but he did understand that the furniture in Eriksson’s apartment did not get there by chance and that it must have cost a lot of money. Everything from the paintings on the walls and the draperies on the windows to the gleaming copper pans in his kitchen and the thick terry-cloth towels in his bathroom. It was hardly surprising considering how types like Eriksson usually were, thought Bäckström.

Besides looking through shelves of books and neatly organized binders of papers in what was evidently his office, items that Blockhead or another one of his simpler colleagues could start digging through after the weekend, Bäckström contented himself with a quick sweep in his hunt for more interesting artistic works. Strangely enough he did not find the least trace of what he was looking for: no videocassettes in anonymous packaging with innocuous handwritten labels, no videocassettes whatsoever. No scrupulously concealed bundles of magazines with oiled-down butt princes in leather, chains, and shiny four-color printing. Nothing at all in that line, actually.

Wonder where he hid them? thought Bäckström, for they must be somewhere. But because he found so many other things of interest he decided to let this matter rest until after the weekend.

In the victim’s bathroom he made his first discovery. A rather refreshing detail that had evidently escaped that blind bat Wiijnbladh the evening before. The fact that Bäckström’s sensitive police nose had put him on the trail didn’t hurt either.

At the bottom of the laundry basket was a dark blue terry-cloth hand towel with a yellow border, soiled with vomit. It was of the same color and pattern as the ones hanging on the hooks in the bathroom. What was strange was that it was farthest down in the large, woven laundry basket, despite the fact that the vomit appeared fresh. It was under a lot of other dirty laundry, including a number of similar hand towels, all brick red with wine red borders, probably put into the laundry basket when someone replaced them with a new, clean set in dark blue with yellow borders.

So that’s how it is, thought Bäckström with delight. Someone’s been sick and tried to conceal that he’s been sick; as a weekend present for a blind technician this couldn’t be better.

Bäckström fished the hand towel from the basket and set it to one side for the time being, in order to devote himself to more essential things, namely the corpse’s quite unbelievable stocks of alcoholic beverages. I’ll be damned if he doesn’t have liquor everywhere, Bäckström thought excitedly.

In the clothes closet there were cases of alcohol. Some were unopened cases, others had only a single bottle missing, and still others had been nipped at longer and harder and most recently by Bäckström himself. Rows of bottles lined up on the floor: cognac, whiskey, gin, vodka, aquavit, as well as a lot of mysterious liqueurs and other shit that ladies and types like Eriksson pour down their throats.

Likewise in the kitchen: a whole pantry and two overhead cupboards full of wine and dessert wine. A number of full wine racks on the kitchen counter and alongside the stove. In the living room was an antique peasant sideboard which, judging by the contents, evidently functioned as a liquor cabinet. On the desk in the office there was a large tray of hammered silver with several carafes filled with amber-colored drinks.

Bäckström made a careful, very discreet culling of this unrestrained excess, but despite the fact that he was exceedingly moderate in what he took, he was forced to borrow an empty suitcase from the victim, as well as a pile of his clean hand towels, so that the contents wouldn’t rattle too terribly much when he drove home.

On his way out he remembered the soiled hand towel and went into the kitchen and rooted among the bags under the sink to find something to put it in. What the hell do you do with soiled hand towels? thought Bäckström. Should they be stored in paper or plastic? Whatever, he thought. Eriksson appeared to have paper bags, and why should he have to do Wiijnbladh’s job? He crumpled the hand towel into a paper bag and called for a taxi on the victim’s phone. What else would you expect? This was a murder investigation, and he had signed for a whole book of taxi vouchers just in case.

On the way home he stopped at the tech squad and asked the taxi to
wait on the street while he left the hand towel on Wiijnbladh’s desk along with a collegial, friendly note and wishes for a nice weekend. Then he could finally call it a day and go home.

It was nice to be able to avoid thinking about the liquor store on a Friday, thought Bäckström.

Paperwork was not Jarnebring’s strong suit, and if he had the choice he would rather use his hands for something besides thumbing through binders. At the same time he was not one to desert a colleague either, so it was actually on Holt’s own suggestion that he decided to swing by the homicide squad and check out the situation, see if anything interesting had come in. Nothing had.

Besides, homicide was basically deserted. The only one there was a young colleague from the uniformed police who was sitting by the tip phone, reading a tabloid and looking rather down in the mouth.

“Has anything happened?” Jarnebring asked.

Not much, according to the tip taker. A few bag ladies and drunks had called, but he had kept it short and was able to get rid of them pretty quickly, jotting down the names of anyone who wanted to provide them. Two individuals had also called and reported that they had known the victim. He had given their names to Gunsan for further processing. He’d be going home soon. His supervisor, Detective Inspector Alm, had promised him he could, when Alm had disappeared on urgent duties in town a few hours earlier.

“He said the duty desk would take over the tip line starting at six o’clock,” he explained to Jarnebring.

“Go home and sleep, kid,” said Jarnebring, nodding. “So that you’re wide awake on Monday.”

Then Jarnebring talked with Gunsan, who would soon be done with the entries on the neighbors that had come in after the additional door-to-door inquiries. It had gone unexpectedly well, considering that it was Friday. That was because almost everyone who lived in the victim’s building was conscientious middle-aged or elderly.

The most interesting thing that had happened was that two individuals had called to say they knew the victim.

“Fine folks on the go,” said Gunsan, smiling. “One of them is even a B-list celebrity you may have seen on TV.”

Jarnebring did not have the faintest idea who either of them were, but he took all of Gunsan’s papers with him anyway to read through in peace down in his own office.

“Isn’t it time for you to go home too?” said Jarnebring, smiling at his female civilian colleague. She was the only real police officer in this place since Danielsson lowered the flag, thought Jarnebring. Why hadn’t she ever applied to the police academy?

“Pretty soon,” said Gunsan, smiling. “How about you, old man? Isn’t it high time you went back to your little fiancée and looked after her?”

“It’ll work out,” said Jarnebring, and then he went down to his own office and his new colleague. Gunsan is actually an extremely attractive woman, he thought as he went through the door to the detective squad. It’s a shame she’s not twenty years younger, he thought. If nothing else this showed how prejudiced he was, as Gunsan was only a little older than he was.

“Okay,” Jarnebring said energetically as he poured yet another mug of black coffee. “If we were to summarize the day, what do we know about our victim? So far?”

He didn’t have a large social circle, or so it seemed. At the same time it was large enough to include—in all likelihood—at least one person who had murdered him.

He was unpopular with his coworkers, to say the least. You could read that between the lines of what his boss and closest coworkers had said. It came through pretty clearly in the doorman’s story. At the same time there was nothing concrete to go on.