First they talked about the witness herself, Mrs. Westergren. Then about the victim, her closest neighbor Kjell Göran Eriksson, who had just turned forty-five at the time of his demise, according to the information that Jarnebring had received from the duty desk a while earlier. Only after that did his colleague bring up the events that had led Mrs. Westergren to call the emergency number. The entire conversation was conducted in a careful, systematic, professional manner and the results were as thin as gruel.
Mrs. Westergren herself was sixty-five years old and recently retired from a job as an official at a bank in Stockholm. She lived alone, had no children, and had moved into the building after her divorce some ten years earlier.
“My ex-husband and I had a house out in Bromma,” she explained. “When we separated and sold the house, I bought this apartment. It’s a condominium.”
Then she told what little she knew about Eriksson. He had moved into the building a few years later, and that was when she had her only long conversation with him. She had knocked on his door to welcome him, and he had invited her in for a cup of coffee.
“I was on the association’s board, after all, the condo association that is, and I thought that it was appropriate. Yes … and then he was my closest neighbor too.”
But there had not been much more.
“He introduced himself of course, but I already knew what his name was. I’d seen it on the paperwork when he bought the apartment. Yes … then he said that he worked at the Central Bureau of Statistics. With labor market statistics, as I recall. But he didn’t actually say much more than that. He seemed rather reserved. Yes, not disagreeable or anything, not really, but far from talkative.”
He must have riled up someone in any event, thought Jarnebring, but of course he didn’t say that.
What was he like as a person?
“As a neighbor he was almost ideal, I guess, if you appreciate peace
and quiet. He never made any fuss. He never went to the association meetings or anything. I don’t think he knew anyone here in the building.”
Did he have any friends that Mrs. Westergren had noticed?
“No women in any event. I don’t believe I ever saw him with a woman during all the years he lived here. Sometimes I saw that he had visitors, but it was always men his own age. There were some that I’ve seen on at least a few occasions. But it really didn’t happen very often that I saw him having visitors. The last time must have been several months ago. Yes … and this evening then … a few hours ago.” Mrs. Westergren had become noticeably paler.
What was it that made her call the police?
“I heard that he had a visitor. I had just come in the door. I’d been out shopping. It must have been some time around seven. I was standing in the hallway hanging up my coat when I heard someone ringing his doorbell. Yes … he opened the door and said something and then the door was closed.”
Had the visitor said anything? Did she have any idea who the visitor was?
She did not. The murder victim’s mysterious visitor had not only been unseen but unheard as well. The witness herself had not thought any more about it. Besides, why should she? Her neighbor had a visit from someone that he knew, and, true, it wasn’t common, but it was no more than that. She had gone out into the kitchen, made a cup of tea and a warm sandwich, which she brought into the living room. She’d had her sandwich, finished her tea, and then read a magazine she had bought when she was out shopping. She preferred reading, you see, and she almost never watched TV.
“It must have been about then that it started … right before eight o’clock. I remember that I was looking at the clock, because at first I had the idea that it was his TV that I was hearing. But of course it wasn’t that.… I realized that. I heard how he was screaming … how he bellowed right out … Then I heard thumps from the furniture as if someone was falling or as if … Yes, as if he was fighting with someone then … Yes, my neighbor, I mean. It was only him that I heard. Not the
other one … although they must have been fighting. What is it the lawyers always say—it’s in the nature of things—although that was what was so strange.” Mrs. Westergren shook her head.
What was it that had been strange?
What was so strange was that he had not sounded afraid. Angry, furious, crazy with rage, but not afraid. Their witness had become noticeably paler as she spoke, but at the same time it was very clear that she was truly exerting herself to remember what she had heard.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Not afraid, he sounded more like he was angry … or furious … He just bellowed in rage … although I didn’t hear what he was screaming.”
“And you’re certain that it was your neighbor you heard? Not the one who was visiting him?”
“Yes. It was Eriksson who screamed. He sounded completely insane actually. The other one I didn’t hear. He was quiet, I guess.”
But it was only when the neighbor’s bellowing had ceased that she had phoned the police. By then she had heard him moaning loudly, and it sounded as though he was crawling around on the floor in the apartment. It was then that she made her first call to the police.
“It never stopped. It felt like an eternity. It sounded as if he was dying in there … and he was too.
“You never came,” she said, and for some reason it was Jarnebring and not his colleague she was looking at when she said that.
Had she noticed anything else? Anything about Eriksson that struck her? Some observation that she had made? Any speculations she’d had?
Anything at all, thought Jarnebring. Give us anything at all because we’re not picky. Just give us a little piece of thread that we can start pulling on.
“No,” said Mrs. Westergren, suddenly looking guarded. “Like what?”
She’s hiding something, thought Jarnebring, feeling the familiar scent in his nostrils, but before he managed to ask the question, his colleague got there first.
“Let me put it like this, Mrs. Westergren,” she said with a friendly smile. “In my job the people we encounter are rarely completely black or completely white … in a moral sense that is. It’s more complicated
than that. I’m thinking about what you’ve told me and my colleague. Everything you’ve said indicates that it was someone who knew Eriksson who attacked him. Why? Eriksson doesn’t appear to have associated with any crazy people. What was it about Eriksson that might provoke someone he knew to the degree that he—”
“Murdered him.” Mrs. Westergren looked pale as she finished the sentence.
“What I mean is … what was it about him that could have caused someone to do that?”
Well done, thought Jarnebring. She has not said “murder” the whole time. She was really good-looking too. Although maybe a little thin?
“I don’t really know,” said Mrs. Westergren. “I have no idea what it could have been.”
His female colleague just nodded without saying anything, simply looking at the older woman who sat across from her. Friendly, cautious, encouraging. Now then …
“I had the feeling,” said Mrs. Westergren hesitantly, “that he had started to drink a great deal recently. That something was worrying him. It’s not like I saw him drunk or anything … but there was something. The last few times I saw him … he seemed really nervous.” Mrs. Westergren nodded in confirmation, and looked almost relieved herself.
Well, well, well, thought Jarnebring. Then we’ll have to find out what sort of thing it was, and then the prosecutor can take over.
When the door knocking was finally finished it was almost midnight and they had gathered in the victim’s apartment for a first go-through. The corpse had already been carted away, leaving only the impressions of his upper body and head on the blood-covered parquet floor where he had been lying. It was clear that effort had been devoted to searching for fingerprints—that flagship of police work—because moldings, handles, and cupboard doors were smeared with black traces of carbon dust. For some reason they had also tidied up—the overturned coffee table, for example, was now standing in its usual position, and it was only to be hoped that Wiijnbladh had managed to take photos before they’d rearranged the furniture. Bäckström sat and smoked as he wallowed in the largest armchair in the room, talking on the victim’s phone while
trying to make a show of not noticing either Jarnebring or his colleague. Wiijnbladh too was his usual self. Little, gray, and fussy as a sparrow that had just stopped pecking for a moment.
“Step right in, just step right in,” said Wiijnbladh, waving a hand, his head at an angle. “Make yourselves at home. I realize that you want to take a look.”
Fucking idiots, thought Jarnebring. How the hell can anyone like them become policemen?
Jarnebring and his new, temporary colleague made the rounds of the apartment, and considering that Eriksson was supposed to have been a bachelor it was a remarkable place. Not the least like Jarnebring’s own two-room apartment over in Vasastan. If you disregarded the disarray created by the crime and the traces of Wiijnbladh’s and the others’ work, the place was quite tidy, neat, almost overfurnished, and in a taste that Jarnebring neither shared nor would have had the means for.
“Strange fucking place,” Jarnebring said to his new colleague.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“To live in,” said Jarnebring. “Hell, I don’t live like this.”
“Imagine that,” she said. “Believe it or not, I didn’t expect you to.”
Wiijnbladh displayed his finds, lined up like trophies on the coffee table. Although he looked like a sparrow he was still proud as a rooster for he had “secured both the murder weapon and a great number of other interesting clues.”
“Yes, we found the murder weapon in the kitchen. The perpetrator had thrown it in the trash.” Wiijnbladh pointed at a large carving knife with a black wooden handle, its shiny blade black with dried blood.
Congrats, thought Jarnebring sourly. This is almost too much to expect from someone as blind as you.
“Is this the victim’s knife?” asked Jarnebring’s colleague.
“It appears to be so, yes, it appears so,” said Wiijnbladh, nodding insightfully. “The blade is almost a foot long, after all, so it’s hardly something you would carry around.”
“Sabatier,” said Jarnebring’s colleague. “French brand, kitchen knives, very expensive. I saw that the other knives in the holder out in the kitchen were also from Sabatier.”
“Exactly, exactly,” said Wiijnbladh, trying to look as though he were appearing on “Nobel Minds.”
What the hell are they up to? thought Jarnebring, looking at his watch. It was past twelve and high time to hit the sack before a new day with fresh mayhem and misery, and here they are yakking about the victim’s choice of kitchen utensils. Even a child could figure out where the knife had come from.
“I’m hearing that you were in the home ec program out at the police academy,” said Bäckström to Jarnebring’s colleague. “It didn’t exist in my day, but maybe we can stop talking domestic science and try to get something done.
“I’ve talked with your boss, Jarnebring,” Bäckström continued, “and he has promised that both you and your girlfriend will help out. So if we could meet at homicide tomorrow morning at nine, I’ll thank you ladies and gentlemen for a pleasant evening.”
Watch out, you little shit, thought Jarnebring, but he didn’t say it.
There really were no major faults with his new, temporary colleague, even if she was a woman, thought Jarnebring as they drove away. First she had offered to put their car back in the garage at the police headquarters on Kungsholmen—she lived nearby so that was no big deal—and on the way there she had driven him home.
“How does it feel to start working as a detective?” asked Jarnebring, who didn’t want to be outdone.
“Good,” she said, nodding. “I think I’m going to like it.”
“You worked with the uniformed police,” said Jarnebring, and this was more a statement than a question. Strange I didn’t notice her, he thought.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “That was a long time ago.”
It couldn’t have been that long, thought Jarnebring. How old could she be? A little over thirty, tops.
“I worked at Sec,” she said. “As a bodyguard.”
The hell you did, thought Jarnebring, but naturally he didn’t say it.
“And now you’ve wound up in a murder investigation,” Jarnebring stated. With two real fools, he thought.
“It’s my first one,” she said, “so it will be interesting.”
“With two real fools,” said Jarnebring.
“You mean Bäckström and Wiijnbladh,” she said and smiled. “I’d actually heard about them. Although it’s only now that I’m starting to believe it’s true … what I heard, that is.”
“Bäckström is a known douche bag,” said Jarnebring. “Let me know if he messes with you and I’ll slap him around.”
“No need to worry,” she said, smiling wanly. “I can do that myself.”
Strange gal, thought Jarnebring. Where the hell is the police department headed?
“So you can then,” said Jarnebring, “in a pinch?”
“Yes,” she said, nodding with her gaze directed straight ahead and her hands steady on the wheel. “I can. In a pinch.”
When she dropped him off outside his door and before he had even managed to think up a suitable farewell line, she simply drove away.
“See you first thing tomorrow morning,” she said and smiled. “Sleep tight now.”
Jarnebring watched the car as it disappeared down the street. Anna Holt, he thought, Inspector Anna Holt. Strange he hadn’t run into her before. After all, he’d been a policeman his entire adult life.
Bäckström had surprised Wiijnbladh. He had offered to stay behind and make sure the crime scene was locked and sealed before they drove away.
“Aren’t you going to ride with me?” asked Wiijnbladh.
“No,” said Bäckström, smiling mysteriously. “I’ve got a little something going if you know what I mean. And you have to drop off what we’ve confiscated up at tech. So I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“That’s nice of you,” said Wiijnbladh. What if I was to sleep at the office? he thought, but obviously he didn’t say that to Bäckström.
• • •
Finally alone, thought Bäckström, and as soon as the little half-fairy Wiijnbladh disappeared out through the door with his bag and baggage Bäckström locked himself in and searched through the corpse’s clothes closet. The bastard had cases of expensive alcohol. Bäckström thought about calling a taxi, but at the same time a real pro took no unnecessary risks. Who knew, there might still be some reporter outside on the street. Whatever. There would be other occasions to return for more bottles—rather that than the goods ending up in the general inheritance fund for any relatives the victim appeared not to have had. The bastard.