Another Time, Another Life (43 page)

“Then I have an idea,” said Holt.

As soon as Holt had left, Johansson told his secretary that under no circumstances did he want to be disturbed. Then he ordered coffee and a much too large bag of Danish pastries from a nearby bakery, and because his wife was traveling for work he had the whole afternoon and evening to himself to go through the crime scene investigation from Eriksson’s apartment and the autopsy report in peace and quiet.

When he got up from his desk a few hours later to stretch his legs, he was completely convinced that he knew what had gone on down to the slightest detail when Kjell Göran Eriksson was murdered almost ten and a half years ago.

Oh shit, thought Lars Martin Johansson, who had never really been able to come to terms with the experience of holding another person’s entire existence in his hands. Maybe I could call Jarnie. After all, he was the one who found Eriksson, he thought, and the mere idea made his mood feel lighter.

“The murder of Kjell Eriksson,” said Johansson. “Do you remember it?”

“I was the one who found him, so I guess I remember a few things,” Jarnebring answered. “Bäckström got to play investigation leader and Wiijnbladh was of course the way he was—so the fact that it went the way it did probably isn’t so strange.”

“A poorly run investigation,” said Johansson, and this was more a statement than a question.

“Does Dolly Parton sleep on her back? Does Pinocchio have a wooden dick?” Jarnebring asked. “True, I hoped you might treat me to dinner, but it’s clear … if you’ve cleared up a ten-year-old murder for us I might as well treat myself to a hot dog on the way home.”

“It doesn’t have to be that bad,” said Johansson. “I’ve already reserved a table for us.”

“Sounds good,” said Jarnebring. “My wife is forewarned and I’ve got permission. So there’s only one thing I’m wondering about.”

“I’m listening,” said Johansson.

“Why is SePo suddenly interested in Eriksson? I mean, if you’ve found out that he was spying for the Russians then perhaps you’re a bit late, considering the state of both Eriksson and the Russians.”

“I’ve thought about that as a matter of fact,” said Johansson. “And I can tell you about it, but then I’ll have to ask you to sign a bunch of papers first.”

“Then I think we’ll forget about that,” said Jarnebring, grinning. “Just so we get out of here at some point.”

“Good,” said Johansson. “Then I thought I’d ask you to look at this picture,” he continued, bringing up an image on the overhead projector in his conference room, which showed Kjell Eriksson lying dead on the floor in his own living room.

“Damn, the things you’ve got in this place,” said Jarnebring with involuntary admiration in his voice. “And here I sit, an ordinary, lousy country cop, in my worn-out shoes and my ragged old detective jacket.”

“Which you paid for yourself,” Johansson observed.

“Life isn’t fair,” said Jarnebring, slowly shaking his head. “I recognize the picture. It must be one of Wiijnbladh’s old pictures.”

“Does this agree with your own recollection?” asked Johansson.

It was a picture of Eriksson’s living room that had been taken from the door between the hall and the living room. The couch was located a few yards out from the short wall running toward the kitchen, and the door into the kitchen was diagonally behind. The overturned coffee table was flanked on either side by an antique armchair and an amply proportioned wingback chair. Squeezed between the couch and the coffee table was Eriksson, lying on his stomach in his own blood.

“Yes,” said Jarnebring. “It looks the way I remember it. Are you going to tell me what happened before he ended up there?”

“I thought we could discuss that,” said Johansson.

“I’m listening,” said Jarnebring.

“Eriksson is sitting on the couch having a drink with his back toward the door to the kitchen. He has no idea what’s going to happen before it happens. The perpetrator comes out from the kitchen and stabs him in
the back while he’s sitting down. When the perpetrator pulls the knife out of Eriksson’s back, blood gushes out of the wound onto the upper edge of the back of the couch. Those are the stains you see here,” said Johansson, clicking to an enlargement of the couch, showing the top side of the back of the couch and half a dozen closely spattered bloodstains the size of rice grains.

“I don’t recognize this enlargement,” said Jarnebring. “I haven’t seen it before.”

“That’s ’cause our technicians developed it, but the original is Wiijnbladh’s,” said Johansson.

“What are you saying?” Jarnebring sighed. “Why didn’t Wiijnbladh ever do that?”

“If you look at the victim’s left shirt sleeve,” Johansson continued, clicking to the next enlargement, which showed Eriksson lying on his stomach on the floor with his arms along the sides of his body, “then you see that he has blood on the shirt sleeve right above the cuff, approximately where he dragged his shirt sleeve across the wound in his back to feel it.”

“On the other hand I do recall that we talked about this, and for once colleague Bäckström and I were in agreement,” said Jarnebring. “Eriksson didn’t realize at first what had happened, so he dragged his free arm over the place on his back that had just been stabbed—he was holding his toddy glass in his right hand—and when he realized what had happened, he went crazy and started to raise Cain. Did you read the interview with the neighbor lady?”

“Yes,” said Johansson. “But what does he do next?”

“Then he seems to have moved around a bit,” said Jarnebring vaguely.

“Seen from the kitchen, with the eyes of the perpetrator, Eriksson is sitting to the right on the couch when the perpetrator comes into the living room,” Johansson said. “Closest to the kitchen door where the perpetrator comes from.”

“Even I get that,” said Jarnebring. “It’s apparent from the location of the bloodstains on the back of the couch that Eriksson was sitting there when he was stabbed.”

“But nonetheless he first moved to the left between the couch and the coffee table,” said Johansson.

“Are you sure of that?” Jarnebring objected. “That’s not the way he’s lying. He’s lying with his head to the right, facing toward the hall. Personally I get the idea he got up, started to raise Cain, and then just folded over—headlong right where he was sitting—he’d been bleeding like a stuck pig so it must have gone fast.”

“No,” said Johansson, “it probably didn’t go quite that fast, because first he took a few steps to the left between the couch and the coffee table, then he turned and went back the way he came, still moving along between the couch and the coffee table. When he was back to the starting point he fell down, pulling the coffee table over as he dropped, and the toddy glass he had put down on the table fell to the floor.”

“This sounds serious, Lars,” said Jarnebring, grinning. “I’m almost getting the idea you were there when it happened.”

“No, but it’s enough to look at this to realize how he moved,” said Johansson, clicking to an enlargement of the blood traces on the floor. “While he was moving to the left, blood from his wound was splashing on the floor, and he stepped in the blood when he turned in place and moved back to the right.”

“When I look at that, yes,” said Jarnebring, nodding at Johansson’s enlargement. “But when we sat and stared at Wiijnbladh’s original, it just looked like the end of the night shift at Enskede slaughterhouse. A fucking lot of blood everywhere.”

“So why did he move in that way?” asked Johansson.

“The simple explanation is that he was trying to get out of reach of the perpetrator, I guess,” said Jarnebring. “The perpetrator was still standing at the right end of the couch where Eriksson had been sitting when he was stabbed. When Eriksson moved away from the perpetrator, that is, to the left, the perpetrator rounded the coffee table on the other side and Eriksson fled back to the right—and then he fell.”

“I think it was just the opposite,” said Johansson. “True, I’ll buy the location and movements of the perpetrator in the room—on the other side of the coffee table and the armchairs—and first to the left and then back to the right again—but otherwise you’re wrong.”

“Since I’m the one who’s playing the fool here, naturally I wonder what you mean,” said Jarnebring.

“What I mean is that it was Eriksson who was trying to get hold of the perpetrator,” said Johansson. “It was Eriksson who was following
the perpetrator, and the perpetrator who was backing up. Not the other way around.”

“The hell it was,” Jarnebring objected. “Not that I met Eriksson while he was alive, but I still got the distinct impression that he was a real little coward.”

“But not this time,” said Johansson, “because he was not physically afraid of this particular perpetrator.”

“I see,” said Jarnebring, smiling broadly. “You’re onto colleague Bäckström’s line, that after all it was a little fairy we’re searching for.”

“No,” said Johansson. “It’s someone else we’re looking for.”

“Someone that Eriksson knew, someone he wasn’t afraid of, but instead someone with whom even Eriksson could feel big and strong,” said Jarnebring.

“Yes,” said Johansson. Unfortunately that’s the way it is, he thought.

“Damn, Lars, say what you want about old unsolved murders, but they’re good for the appetite,” Jarnebring said an hour later as they sat at their usual table at Johansson’s regular place and had just been served a baked sandwich of Parma ham, mozzarella, basil, and tomato as a little prelude to the lamb filet that would come when it was time to get serious.

“Too bad it has to be an ordinary Tuesday,” said Johansson vaguely.

“You’re thinking of a small one,” said Jarnebring.

“What makes you think that?” Johansson asked evasively.

“I’m a cop,” said Jarnebring. “I’ve been a cop my whole adult life—and I’ve known you just as long—and because Pia is out of town anyway and I am free myself, I get the idea that you, in your dark Norrland way, are talking about a little shot, despite the fact that it’s only Tuesday.”

“What the hell should we do?” said Johansson hesitantly. It is only Tuesday after all, he thought.

“Order two good-sized shots and pretend it’s Friday,” Jarnebring decided.

It was Holt’s suggestion, a sudden idea, a pure hunch that would probably prove to be completely wrong.

“It’s worth trying anyway,” Johansson said, which was why he was sitting with Wiklander in his office early Wednesday morning, refining tactics. Unusually alert and sober besides, despite the previous evening.

“I see you’ve already spoken with our colleague Holt,” said Johansson, nodding toward the little gold pin in the form of a trident that now adorned the lapel of Wiklander’s jacket.

“Old coast commando,” Wiklander nodded, not without pride as it appeared.

“Yes, be happy you don’t have to wear a fake mustache,” said Johansson, who was in the absolute best of moods because he was being let out into the field again. Despite his high rank, and despite all the old rust he was no doubt dragging along with him.

The day before, Holt had suddenly happened to think of Eriksson’s neighbor, the major, about whom she had had her suspicions after she and Jarnebring had interviewed him ten years ago.

“I had the distinct impression he was hiding something from us,” Holt had explained to her boss. “He was a guarded type, very guarded, and he had peepholes in the door and a good view of both the hallway and the stairwell. Because there had been a lot of racket at Eriksson’s the night of the murder, I thought it was more than probable that he had
tried to peep out and see what was happening. Possibly he saw the perpetrator when he or she left. At that time I was completely convinced that the person we were searching for was a man,” she clarified. “All of us were, not least Bäckström.”

“Why didn’t the major say so then?” asked Johansson. “About whether he’d seen anything.”

“For several reasons, I think,” said Holt. “First, he clearly seemed to dislike Eriksson. Second, he didn’t like the police. That was probably enough for him to decide to keep his mouth shut. And it may have been much simpler too,” she added.

“What do you mean?” asked Johansson.

“He was extremely anxious to show what an old warrior he was. For a while I almost thought he was going to show us an old bullet wound from the Finnish war he was boasting about. But maybe when he saw something he was just afraid, like anyone else would be, or out of cowardice or laziness he didn’t want to be drawn into something. I’m sure he would rather bite his tongue off than admit to something like that.”

“Yes,” said Johansson, nodding. “But isn’t it still most likely that he didn’t see anything?”

“Yes,” said Holt. “That’s the most likely—that I’m completely wrong.”

“It’s worth trying anyway,” said Johansson. “But why do you want me in particular to do it?” he added. “You should know it’s been a while.” Even if I am flattered that she asked, of course, he thought.

“I think you’re just the right type to pry open that old cuss,” Holt explained.

“Do I look like I might conceivably share his political opinions?” Johansson asked. Think carefully about what you say, Holt, he thought.

“No,” said Holt, looking at Johansson, “but you definitely look like a man with strong opinions.”

“Nice,” said Johansson. And how nice is it on a scale from one to ten, he thought, for he had heard his wife say that.

“He scarcely noticed my presence,” Holt explained. “On the other hand he took note of Jarnebring—who doesn’t,” said Holt, smiling faintly. “But at the same time I think he felt that Jarnebring was maybe a little too simple for him to condescend to take seriously.”

“I think I’m starting to get an idea of the type,” said Johansson.

• • •

So now they were sitting there, at home with the major in his apartment on Rådmansgatan.

“The secret police and the second highest in command if I’ve understood this correctly,” said the major, nodding toward Johansson as he set Johansson’s business card down on the desk, behind which he had settled himself. “To what do I owe this honor?”

“It concerns a neighbor of yours, Major Carlgren, a man who was murdered in 1989,” Johansson explained.