Another Time, Another Life (23 page)

“You were all young socialists at that time,” said Holt.

“I’m still a socialist,” said Tischler, sounding almost offended. “I’ve
always had my heart to the left … and my wallet to the right,” he added with a broad smile. “As I said, we were all radicals back then, socialists or communists. For the same reason that today all reasonable people have left that behind them as soon as they realized where it was going.”

“But you’re not an opportunist,” said Holt.

“That is patently absurd,” said Tischler solemnly. “Hell, I was born with a whole set of silverware in my mouth. I’ve never needed to be an opportunist.”

“But Kjell Eriksson needed to be,” said Holt.

“Yes,” said Tischler, suddenly sounding serious. “And the way things were for him when he was growing up I have a very hard time holding that against him. People try to adapt themselves to the time they live in, and when times change their lives change too. There are very few of us for whom things are so ordained that we, like a strong current, can ride our own waves through the sea.”

“Nicely put,” said Holt.

“I know,” said Tischler, grinning. “I have to confess I swiped it from a book.”

“What do you say about having dinner in Paris, this evening?” said Tischler, keeping hold of Holt’s hand in his when she was about to leave.

“Unfortunately,” said Holt, smiling, “I’m afraid that won’t work. In another time and another life maybe,” she said.

“I live in hope,” said Tischler, looking at her with his very attentive eyes.

At the investigation team’s last meeting before the weekend the opposing factions came into the open.

Out-and-out fucking mutiny, thought Bäckström as he marched out of the room, his face bright red, after they were through quarreling.

Bäckström started pushing his homo lead again, for the umpteenth time, and now even the three younger colleagues who were on loan from the uniformed police were starting to give audible expression to their doubts.

“You don’t think there’s a risk we’ll get locked in?” the first one of them began cautiously. She was the only woman of the three. “In school we learned that it was crucial to have a broad and open attitude to this sort of thing.”

Stick it up yours, you little sow, thought Bäckström, but he wasn’t going to say that when there were witnesses present, so it had to be something else instead.

“I’m listening,” Bäckström said smoothly. “What did you mean to propose instead?”

“I don’t know,” she continued hesitantly, “but what is there that actually indicates that Eriksson was homosexual?”

“Apart from what the forensic doctor and his two best friends for twenty years say,” sneered Bäckström, “is there anything in particular
you’re missing? Sailor costume, Vaseline jar, mesh stockings way back in the dresser drawer? Some good porno tapes with well-oiled butt princes?” Or maybe you want Uncle Evert to grease your little mouse for you, he thought.

“Hang on,” said Jarnebring, giving Bäckström the same look he always did when he had decided that enough was enough. “Me and my colleague Holt here,” said Jarnebring, nodding toward her, “have turned Eriksson’s apartment inside out. If anyone thinks we’ve missed something, then he or she is welcome to try themselves. We haven’t found a damn thing that clearly indicates that Eriksson had any sexual orientation whatsoever. We’ve even checked his sheets—because colleague Wiijnbladh apparently forgot that small detail—and just like his cleaning woman for the past two years—because we’ve also talked with her—we haven’t found the slightest little trace of sperm whatsoever. Much less a strand of hair from anyone other than Eriksson himself, or anything that indicates that any sexual activity whatsoever has occurred in that bed or in that bedroom or in that apartment.

“Personally,” Jarnebring continued, raising his right hand slightly when he saw that Bäckström was thinking about saying something, “I would have felt considerably more comfortable if we’d found something of the sort you usually find. Not to mention all those accessories you keep carrying on about all the time.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” said Bäckström, “but wasn’t it you who had the idea that someone had cleaned up and removed some stuff from Eriksson’s apartment? A whole suitcase if I remember rightly?”

“I don’t know,” said Jarnebring. “That may be so, doesn’t need to be, but I think it was papers in any case. Not his old sheets or his corset, if he had something like that.” Jarnebring smiled wryly and exchanged a glance with Holt.

“I hear what you’re saying,” said Bäckström defensively, for there was something in the eyes of the gorilla-like psychopath that made him feel extremely ill at ease. “If you hear me, all I’m saying is what his two closest acquaintances have said—and what the forensic doctor said.”

“When I read the interviews,” said Jarnebring, “I wonder what
was
actually said. Welander possibly makes an insinuation, and that applies to Tischler too, even if otherwise he appears to be a motor mouth, but
neither of them knows anything. One of them possibly thinks something; the other may possibly imagine something. After twenty years’ acquaintance. Talk about buddies.”

“The forensic doctor then,” said Bäckström. I didn’t know you could even read, thought Bäckström sourly, and who the hell gave that half-ape my interviews anyway?

“Don’t interrupt me,” said Jarnebring. “I’m getting to her. First let’s finish with our witnesses, and the way I see it there are three possibilities. Either it’s the way at least one of them suggests, in which case we’ve missed something. Or else it’s just that they’ve imagined things. Or else they’ve tried to get us to believe that their friend Eriksson was … well, homosexual. And if that’s the way it is, then it suddenly becomes damned interesting, considering what you’ve said to them.”

Never underestimate a colleague, even if he looks like something that lives in a cave and woke up on the wrong side of the bed, Holt thought, smiling almost sweetly at Jarnebring.

“My colleague Jarnebring and I are in complete agreement,” said Holt. “We’ve both read the interviews, and as you know I’ve talked with Tischler myself. He was not exactly taciturn, but it was mostly noise and little substance.” My colleague Jarnebring, thought Holt, who a moment earlier and in a most unequal manner felt that she had received a major distinction.

“Glad to hear you’re in agreement,” said Bäckström. “To return to reality for a moment, what do you say about the forensic doctor’s report? Has he only been imagining things too?”

“I’ve actually talked to her,” said Jarnebring. “I happened to be in the neighborhood on another errand and I ran into her at the forensic lab. Briefly, she hadn’t the faintest idea of what either Esprit or Wiijnbladh are running around fabricating. Esprit hasn’t had anything to do with Eriksson whatsoever. And he’s on sick leave. Because she is Esprit’s boss, she needs to talk to him as soon as he locates his cane and finds his way back to work.”

“You’ve talked with the forensic doctor?” said Bäckström. This is complete mutiny, he thought.

“Yes,” said Jarnebring, looking at him. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“No,” said Bäckström quickly. The guy is lethal, he thought. How could someone like that run around loose? And what the hell was going on when he became a cop?

“Good,” said Jarnebring. “Where was I now … yes,” he continued. “She had also spoken with Wiijnbladh, and he simply asked her if there was anything to indicate that Eriksson might have been homosexual in the sense that it actually showed up in the forensic inspection and the autopsy. Do you know what she said?”

“No,” said Bäckström. Where the hell was Wiijnbladh anyway? Typical of the little rat to sneak away in a situation like this, he thought.

“No,” said Jarnebring. “She said no. And if you want I can trot over to Wiijnbladh and take it up directly with him.”

“That won’t be necessary,” said Bäckström. Even if it would be funny because he would probably shit his pants, he thought.

“That’s good,” said Jarnebring. “Glad to know we’re in agreement.”

“I’m listening,” said Bäckström. “Give me a name.”

“He’s here,” said Jarnebring, tapping his finger on the investigation files binder on the table in front of him. “You can bet your sweet ass he’s here, but we’ve missed him because we’ve been looking for the wrong things.”

The guy is completely insane, thought Bäckström.

The reason that Wiijnbladh had been absent from the meeting the day before was that he was saddled with a poisoning. A medical student who lived at home with his elderly father had been having problems with his studies. He had missed a number of exams, fallen seriously behind, and after a period of brooding decided to solve his academic problems by lacing his dad’s breakfast yogurt with an ample dose of thallium. His success far exceeded the progress of his studies. Considered as a motive, this was an excellent illustration of Lars Martin Johansson’s thesis of the cherry on the cake.

Now the former future doctor was sitting in the jail at Kronoberg. On Wiijnbladh’s workbench at the tech squad was the bottle of thallium that the perpetrator had swiped from the chemistry department at the Karolinska Institute, and there was enough poison remaining to depopulate half the police headquarters on Kungsholmen. In Wiijnbladh’s pleasure-filled fantasies, this enchanted bottle with its death-bringing genie was a gift from above that probably, within the not too distant future, would solve his problems as well.

Wiijnbladh’s difficulties were not related to his studies, for he had never really devoted himself to any such things. Apart from six years of elementary school, less than a year at the old police academy, and a few weeklong courses for crime technicians, Wiijnbladh had studiously avoided all theoretical extravagances, and just like the majority of his colleagues on the squad he was firmly convinced that the only abilities worth the name were those he had acquired by practice.

“We have to distinguish between theory and practice the same way we distinguish between imagination and reality,” as his legendary boss Commissioner Blenke had so eloquently summarized the matter when, in connection with a review of the squad’s operations, he explained to the inspectors from the National Police Board why the entire library appropriation was spent on fingerprint powder.

Wiijnbladh’s problem was different, and relatively simple in the sense that it made up approximately 99 percent of all his problems.

It was bad enough that Wiijnbladh’s wife cheated on him quite openly, which was contrary to the basic idea. Worst of all, however, was that she preferred to do it with other police officers, and because this had been going on for a number of years there was not a division nowadays within the Stockholm Police Department that didn’t contain one or more coworkers who had put horns on their colleague Wiijnbladh.

Like his spiritual brother, the former medical student, after lengthy speculations Wiijnbladh had come to the conclusion that the only way to solve the problem was to eliminate his wife. Because Wiijnbladh deeply disliked both blunt trauma and knife attacks, was nauseated by their consequences, and obviously did not want to go to jail, he had decided to poison her. Murder by poison was a completely unknown practice at the tech squad where he worked, and the fact that the case of the medical student was solved was not due to dogged fieldwork by the squad’s collaborators but rather to the perpetrator himself, who in complete confidence had told an even larger number of classmates about his little caper with his dad.

What could be more certain than using poison, thought Wiijnbladh, for it was common knowledge that lightning never strikes twice in the same place.

Wiijnbladh was now a rich man. He had had both motive and opportunity for a long time, but only one day ago he had secured the means required. So he was also a happy man and decided it would be best to wait for a long weekend or perhaps even until summer when all police officers worth the name were on vacation and only Bäckström and his constantly moonlighting fellow prisoners were left behind.

• • •

Chief Inspector Danielsson at the homicide squad did not sound equally happy when he called Jarnebring and asked if he wanted to have lunch with him out in town. Jarnebring had immediately figured out why he sounded like he did. But sure, lunch was still lunch. They had mashed potatoes and rutabaga with pickled pork and each had a light beer. Apart from the latter this was food for real policemen, and even before Danielsson stuck the fork into the large piece of meat on his plate he got to the point.

“You don’t need to say anything, Bo,” Danielsson grunted. “I talked with Gunsan this morning and she told me what happened at the meeting. I haven’t managed to get hold of that fat little shit because he’s hiding out as usual. Which is just as well, because otherwise I might have done something to him I would regret.”

“Have you read the material?” asked Jarnebring.

“Some of it,” Danielsson nodded. “Then Gunsan filled in the rest. If I understood it right both Welander and Tischler have alibis. It’s completely ruled out that either of them were holding the knife?”

“Yes,” said Jarnebring, shaking his head. “There isn’t a chance. Welander’s witnesses are too good for that, regardless of what you might think about their TV programs, and as far as Tischler is concerned Holt has checked with the airline and the personnel out at Arlanda.”

“Could they have used an accomplice?” asked Danielsson.

“Don’t think so,” said Jarnebring. “That seems both unlikely and far-fetched.”

“Why are you so in love with those two?” Danielsson wondered.

“Because I think they’re both lying,” said Jarnebring. “Even if they themselves are innocent of Eriksson’s murder, and perhaps didn’t even know that it would happen, I still get the idea that they know what went on.”

“Why do you think they’re lying then?” asked Danielsson. Perjury, conspiracy, protecting a criminal, he thought unhappily.

“Why in the name of common sense would two people like them keep associating year after year with a miserable character like Eriksson if it wasn’t because he had some kind of hold over them?” Jarnebring countered. “Take Tischler, for example. As far as I’m concerned he can have all the money in the world. I still don’t believe he helped Eriksson
earn a few million just because he wanted to be nice to him. Without even having met Tischler, I really don’t think he’s the type.”