Лейф Перссон - Another Time, Another Life

“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.”