Another Time, Another Life (12 page)

“He wasn’t exactly the kind of guy you’d want to share an office with,” Jarnebring summarized.

“It would be nice to have something more concrete,” said Holt. “An example, I mean. The man can’t just have been born bad.”

“Don’t be so sure,” said Jarnebring.

• • •

Holt had been struck by one thing as she was plowing through all the papers. Considering his rather modest salary, for it was no more remarkable than her own or Jarnebring’s after the customary police overtime, he seemed to have astonishingly good finances. According to income statements for the last five years, which was what she had produced up to now, he had capital income that widely exceeded his income from his job. He also owned a condominium worth at least a million Swedish kronor, and according to the tax form he had a fortune of the same magnitude in stocks, bonds, and regular bank balances.

“You saw his apartment,” said Holt. “Strange as it may sound, I do actually know a bit about art and antiques, and I’d guess there’s another million in the contents of his apartment. Which would mean he must have been worth three or four million.”

“Maybe an inheritance,” Jarnebring suggested. “Didn’t he have an old mother who kicked the bucket in the mid-eighties? Art and antiques, isn’t that the sort of thing you inherit if you’ve chosen the right parents?”

Holt just shook her head. The mother had died in 1984, and according to the estate inventory that the excellent Gunsan had already produced, the old woman had left behind four thousand kronor.

“His old man,” Jarnebring suggested.

“Father unknown,” Holt shot back. “Eriksson seems to have grown up with a single mother and a completely absent father. Poor thing. Think how that must have been.” For some reason she sounded almost ready to burst into laughter.

Shit, thought Jarnebring. He hated cases like these. The victim at home with a knife in the back and someone he or she voluntarily let in usually involved drunkenness, agitated emotions in general, or jealousy and ordinary insanity in particular, and regardless of whether the latter was temporary or permanent, he and his colleagues would seldom need more than a week to put the pieces together and land the perpetrator in lockdown. But when money was involved it was almost never that easy,
and if there was anything he wished for it was that Eriksson’s inexplicable good finances had nothing to do with his death.

“It’ll work out,” said Jarnebring, smiling and nodding with more conviction than he really felt, as he rocked back in his chair.

“On Monday,” said Holt, and she smiled too.

“On Monday we’ll turn his apartment inside out,” said Jarnebring, “and then I’m willing to bet a month’s pay we find our perpetrator too. When we’ve got the telephone lists and all the entries and have gone through all his notebooks and scraps of paper and photo albums and old letters and God knows what.”

“So isn’t it time to step on the gas now?” Holt was still smiling, but the question was serious enough. “You’ve heard about the twenty-four-hour rule and all that, haven’t you?”

“You watch too many of those American detective shows,” said Jarnebring. “Let me say this,” he continued. “Our colleague Bäckström is definitely no bright and shining light, but he does have a certain instinct for self-preservation. Besides, his boss has been around awhile and doesn’t usually pull his punches when things get too far off course.”

“Jack Daniels,” said Holt, smiling.

“Yes, sure,” said Jarnebring. “I understand what you mean. But assume we’d found Eriksson outside his apartment. Knifed in the entryway or out on the street. Then we would have had an all-out effort, and I can assure you it wouldn’t have been colleague Bäckström behind the wheel.”

“The murder of Eriksson isn’t so difficult that it can’t wait until after the weekend?” Holt looked at him inquisitively.

“I really don’t think so,” said Jarnebring. “At least it doesn’t feel that way. Unplanned, not premeditated. A perpetrator who must have made lots of mistakes, and who knew the victim besides. We almost always nail that. And if we have really good luck then the culprit comes to us on his own when his conscience gets to him.” Although it’s a bitch that Lars Martin isn’t here, he thought with irritation. Then we could have probably taken the weekend off because the perpetrator would already be sitting in jail crying his eyes out. Someone other than Jarnebring usually took care of that part.

“Sounds good,” said Holt. “Then I can see my guy.”

“What does he do?” said Jarnebring, smiling despite the fact that he had a rather hard to place and not altogether pleasant feeling about what she had said.

“The handsomest guy in town,” said Holt. “Niklas Holt, six years old. Generally known as Nicke.”

“Please send him my greetings,” said Jarnebring, and then they called it a day. And it was just in time if he was to have any hope of making peace with his fiancée before darkness settled far too deeply over the city.

When Wiijnbladh and his good friend the doctor finished their discussion, he borrowed the telephone and called home to find out if he should get anything for dinner on his way back. But his wife had evidently already gone out or else she wasn’t bothering to answer. Instead he drove past the office one more time, and on his desk he found a vomit-soiled, foul-smelling hand towel, bunched together and shoved into a paper bag from Lisa Elmquist in the Östermalm market, as well as a shameless letter from Bäckström. He remained at the office until far into the night.

First he had to complete a new form for the seizure of the hand towel. Then, after an initial preliminary inspection, he decided to conduct various chemical investigations of the same hand towel, and this too had required a tribute of forms. Last and finally he made sure the hand towel was packed correctly before it was sent on to the National Laboratory of Forensic Science in Linköping.

Then he made coffee and had the sandwich he had intended to have for lunch but that had remained sitting back at the office because he had simply forgotten about it. True, he was not particularly hungry now, but still he had paid for it. And when he finally mustered enough strength to get on the subway and go home, the usual thoughts started grinding in his already tired head.

I have to do something, thought Wiijnbladh. I can’t live like this. It can’t go on. He was thinking about his wife who had openly cheated on him and thereby robbed him of any possibility of a respectable life.

• • •

When Jarnebring arrived home he called his fiancée to mediate peace, but the conversation did not start particularly well. Icy voice on the other end.

“Hi honey,” said Jarnebring. “Your old man is home again after a long day’s struggle against crime. Soon to be a full day’s invigorating murder investigation.”

“So now my old man is hungry and wants me to cook dinner,” she answered, and the way she said it was enough for frost to form on the receiver he was holding against his ear.

“Are you nuts, honey?” said Jarnebring, who had planned the whole thing with care. “Just start powdering your little nose, I’ll be there in half an hour. I have a table reserved at your favorite dive, three courses, candles, and live music. I’ve arranged a tango orchestra, and I’m sure they’re already on their way.”

“You’re hopeless,” she said, “but all right.”

And there was something in her voice that definitely gave him hope for brighter, better times. Easy as pie. Now it’s only a matter of finding that tie she gave me the day after we met, thought Jarnebring, and hung up.

To be sure, the part about the tango orchestra wasn’t true, but otherwise it all added up. And what do you need an orchestra for when your whole heart is singing? thought Jarnebring as he twined his fingers through hers, which were only half as big.

“Listen, Bo,” she said, but because he already knew what was coming he just slowly shook his head, tested the old wolf grin, and took her other hand in his as well.

“In a few weeks it’s … well, you know … an even number if I may say so.” I can’t sit here and say that soon it’s four years, he thought. Never wake a sleeping badger.

“Yes?” She nodded seriously and looked at him.

“My suggestion is that we go away. Avoid having a lot of relatives and colleagues drinking up your money. I’ll invite Lars Martin, you can invite Karin. Isn’t she your best friend?”

“Is this a proposal?” she asked. Yet another, she thought.

“Yes, well,” said Jarnebring and nodded, and there must have been something in the food for it felt as if something was stuck in his throat. “I know it sounds a little corny, but that’s what it’s supposed to be. A proposal, that is.”

“In that case the answer is yes,” she said, nodding.

They didn’t bother with champagne. Instead they went home to his fiancée and future wife’s place and played the film backward to the first days of their relationship. When Jarnebring finally fell asleep he felt like the sun was already about to go up on the other side of the curtains, but he must have been wrong because the red digital display on the alarm clock on the nightstand only showed three, and she was resting with her back and behind pressed against his chest and stomach, like a coffee spoon against a soup ladle, Jarnebring thought contentedly. In his world this was exactly as it should be, her head resting on his right arm and his left arm over her side and his hand carefully against her stomach. And when a dream finally took him and led him away he sensed the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee, fresh-squeezed juice, scrambled eggs and bacon.

It’s going to work out, thought Jarnebring between sleep and trance, and then he slept just as securely as when he was a little boy and summer vacation had just begun.

Criminal inspector Anna Holt, age thirty-one, had spent the weekend with her son, Niklas “Nicke” Holt, age six. They had gone skating in Kungsträdgården, had junk food at McDonald’s on Norrmalmsgatan, bought a new jacket for Nicke, played games, and been couch potatoes.

“This is the way it will always be for you and me, Mama,” Nicke summarized the weekend when it was time for a bedtime story on Sunday evening.

Criminal inspector Evert Bäckström, age forty-seven, didn’t wake up until Saturday afternoon with what was, even by his standards, a formidable hangover, which he attributed to all the alcohol he had unfortunately happened to pour into himself the evening before. First came malt whiskey, vodka, and cognac, and so far all was well and good. Unfortunately toward the wee hours he had also sampled—mostly out of curiosity—some bottles with contents unknown, which for philanthropic reasons he had rescued from the General Inheritance Fund.

When he went down to the convenience store to shop for a little late breakfast he was met by the major evening tabloid, which reported that an “insane serial murderer” had been running loose in the city for almost a year now and that he had just “butchered his fourth victim.”

Where the hell’d they get that from? Bäckström thought, and contrary to habit bought a copy.

As he read it he saw Jack Daniels before him. It was not a pleasant sight, and he realized it was high time to drag himself off to work and execute a number of preventive measures over the weekend.

Jarnebring didn’t even open a newspaper over the weekend. He and his future wife didn’t leave their bed any more than was absolutely necessary, and when she parted from him outside work on Monday morning he couldn’t remember when he had last felt so good. For breakfast he got fresh-brewed coffee with milk, fresh-squeezed orange juice, two fresh-baked rolls with a crisp crust, lettuce and ham, and a large plate of yogurt with fresh fruit.

I have to call Lars Martin and tell him, he thought as he went through the door to the detective squad.

“Have you seen the newspaper?” Bäckström asked, waving his copy of Saturday’s tabloid as he stepped into Danielsson’s office on Monday morning. Better to forestall than be forestalled. Go ahead, shit your pants, Jack Daniels, he thought with delight when he saw Danielsson’s expression.

There were a number of indications that Danielsson too had seen the newspaper. Among others, there was a copy of the same newspaper in front of him on his desk. But after Bäckström’s opening, the boss did not have much to say. Mostly he sat silently in his chair and glared at Bäckström, his swollen face purple and a vein as large as an earthworm wriggling back and forth on his left temple.

Soon his fuse will blow, thought Bäckström with delight, but of course he didn’t say that. Instead he arranged his face in a worried frown and kept talking according to his carefully prepared strategy.

“My first thought was that the leak came from someone inside,” said Bäckström, shaking his head. “As you know we have a number of new, unknown entities working with us. But then”—Bäckström shook his round head again—“then I actually read this crap, so now I don’t think so anymore.” Bäckström nodded for the third time and looked at his boss credulously.

“So why don’t you think so?” Danielsson grunted, looking askance at his colleague.

“It’s just too stupid,” said Bäckström. “That some religious maniac would run around butchering homos with a … what the hell was it? … 
samurai sword because he was sexually abused by a male father figure when he was a child. Or so says the psychologist the tabloid talked with.”

“Samurai sword?”

“Yeah, you know, one of those things the saffron monkeys have,” said Bäckström. “You and I and everyone else who knows anything know that Eriksson was stabbed with an ordinary kitchen knife. It’s sitting down in tech for examination.”

And there wasn’t much more to it than that.

“Unfortunately I’ve got to run,” said Bäckström. “I have a meeting with the investigation group.”

Danielsson didn’t say a word. Only stared at him.

“Okay,” said Bäckström, leaning forward in his chair and looking energetically at the detective team assembled in full force in the room. “Let’s start with Eriksson himself. What was he doing before he closed up shop? Jarnebring?”