Лейф Перссон - Another Time, Another Life

“Between us...” Bäckström lowered his voice and leaned even closer. “It was a real machete... like a samurai sword almost.” Bäckström indicated this by stretching out his fat arm.

“You don’t think this might have any connection with the porno murders,” the reporter said with eyes shining.

“What do you mean?” asked Bäckström evasively. This may be going a little too fast, he thought.

“There’s a lunatic going around hacking up people with a big knife. There are at least three now. First that Negro on Söder, and then those other two who were jerking off in porno shops. One down in Vasastan and one outside the apartment where he lived. Hell, Bäckström... don’t you see we have a serial killer on the loose?”

“Well, yes,” said Bäckström. “I hear what you’re saying, and that thought has occurred to me too.” What the hell do I do now? thought Bäckström, and for some reason he also happened to think of his immediate supervisor, chief inspector Danielsson. It was not a pleasant thought.

“Was Eriksson involved with pornography?” Now his host was looking Bäckström right in the eye. “Was Eriksson involved with pornography?” he repeated.

Involved with pornography? I guess everyone is, thought Bäckström confusedly, but then he pulled himself together and nodded energetically at his host.

“Personally I’ve been thinking that there’s a sexual motive,” said Bäckström. For he actually had. He’d realized this as soon as he saw how the bastard lived. So far that was completely true, thought Bäckström. And pretty much everyone looks at pornography except old ladies of course. I’ll have to see if I find any magazines or videotapes at his place. With those butt princes in their sailor suits, he thought, suddenly feeling livelier again.

“Great, Bäckström,” said the reporter. “I get it, I get it. We’ll do the usual... sources in police headquarters allege. It’s cool. What do you say to a cognac with coffee, by the way?”

“It’ll have to be a small one,” said Bäckström.

Criminal Inspector Wiijnbladh spent the better part of the day at the medical examiner’s office in Solna where he attended the autopsy of their murder victim, Kjell Göran Eriksson, and also secured the clothing the corpse was still wearing when the forensic examination started.

Normally these were rather pleasant affairs, during which you had the opportunity to exchange professional experiences and shoot the breeze with officers from homicide and the doctors who worked at the office. But not this time, Wiijnbladh thought gloomily. For it wasn’t enough that he was there as the sole representative of the police, since that completely unrestrained binge eater Bäckström was overseeing the investigation. As soon as he stepped inside the door out in Solna he had been struck by yet another blow. The autopsy would evidently be performed by a new forensic physician in the department. A young woman, thirty-five at the most, it seemed, whom Wiijnbladh had neither met nor heard mentioned before. A short little person with unpleasantly searching eyes, who judging by the nametag she wore on her white coat was named “Birgit H.,” just like some character in that incomprehensible novel he’d received as a birthday present from his dreadful sister-in-law, but who apparently preferred to be called “simply Birgit.”

“My name is Birgit,” she said, extending her steady little hand, “simply Birgit, and I’m guessing that you’re Wiijnbladh.”

“Okay then,” said Wiijnbladh when the formalities were out of the way and they had taken their places at the autopsy table. “The professor himself is away at a conference I’m guessing?”

“The professor?” Birgit said questioningly. “Do you mean Dr. Engel? Or ‘Esprit de Corpse,’ as I’ve heard you all call him.”

“Well, yes,” said Wiijnbladh evasively. He didn’t like people to be called by their nicknames. Especially when they themselves were not present. But certainly, at police headquarters and among police officers Dr. Engel was best known as Doctor “Corpse” or “Engel with two e ’s.” An interesting man of somewhat vague German-Yugoslavian background, but with considerable practical experience according to what the police officers could tell, and known as a great joker besides, provided the joke wasn’t about him.

Birgit shook her head.

“He hasn’t gone away,” said Birgit. “He fell off a loading dock.”

“Good Lord,” said a shocked Wiijnbladh. “How did it happen?”

“Eh!” Birgit shrugged her shoulders with irritation. “Work accident. Going out to look at the scene. I guess it was one of his moonlighting jobs for one of those insurance companies that he fiddles around with instead of focusing on his job. And because he’s almost blind he walked right off the end of the loading dock. Wrist fracture and concussion but none of his nobler parts.”

“Blind,” said Wiijnbladh. What did she mean? he thought.

“Precisely,” said Birgit, fixing him with her black peppercorn eyes. “Our colleague Dr. Engel is acutely near-sighted and because he’s as vain as he is he refuses to wear glasses. Among other things that’s why he always says hello to the palm tree down in the lobby when he comes to work in the morning. Moving the palm is a popular prank among his younger coworkers, by the way. However not with me, and if you don’t believe me or understand why, I suggest you go to a blind dentist next time you have a toothache.”

“I really had no idea,” Wiijnbladh defensively. What is that person standing here saying? he wondered. Blind? Could his old friend Milan be blind?

“Besides, he’s not a professor,” said Birgit. “He calls himself professor but that’s not the same thing, and if you don’t have any objection I was thinking about starting now.”

“Of course, of course,” said Wiijnbladh. What an unpleasant, pushy woman, he thought.

“Nice to hear,” said Birgit as she let her gaze sweep over the gleaming implements on the instrument table, “and in contrast to Engel I am actually a professor, a real professor, so you can be completely at ease, Inspector.”

What an extraordinarily unsympathetic woman, thought Wiijnbladh.

One thing was certain, however, thought Wiijnbladh reluctantly as she pulled off her rubber gloves two hours later: This wasn’t the first time she’d done an autopsy. Personally he’d never seen anything like it, despite the fact that he had attended hundreds of them.

“Well then,” said Birgit as she plucked the cassette tape out of the tape recorder into which she had dictated her observations during the course of her work. “Let’s go into my office and talk. Don’t forget to bring his clothes along. I don’t want them left here making a mess.”

She nodded at the bags with Eriksson’s trousers, shirt, undershirt, underwear, socks, and shoes.

“Coffee or tea?” asked Birgit, nodding at the coffeemaker set up on a small table next to her desk. She had already supplied herself with black coffee and was sitting in her large desk chair with her legs resting on the desk.

“I’m okay,” said Wiijnbladh. This is not a human being, he thought. This is a little ballbuster in human form.

“Good,” Birgit said curtly. “You’ll get the report next week when the tests are ready. But I’m guessing you’ll want a preliminary statement.”

“Yes, gladly, if it’s all right, I mean,” said Wiijnbladh, and for some reason he happened to think of Jarnebring, even though this specimen was only half as large as the dangerous lunatic on the homicide squad.

“Then that’s what you’ll get,” said Birgit. “I’ll do it in ordinary Swedish so there aren’t any misunderstandings.”