Лейф Перссон - Another Time, Another Life

In the victim’s bathroom he made his first discovery. A rather refreshing detail that had evidently escaped that blind bat Wiijnbladh the evening before. The fact that Bäckström’s sensitive police nose had put him on the trail didn’t hurt either.

At the bottom of the laundry basket was a dark blue terry-cloth hand towel with a yellow border, soiled with vomit. It was of the same color and pattern as the ones hanging on the hooks in the bathroom. What was strange was that it was farthest down in the large, woven laundry basket, despite the fact that the vomit appeared fresh. It was under a lot of other dirty laundry, including a number of similar hand towels, all brick red with wine red borders, probably put into the laundry basket when someone replaced them with a new, clean set in dark blue with yellow borders.

So that’s how it is, thought Bäckström with delight. Someone’s been sick and tried to conceal that he’s been sick; as a weekend present for a blind technician this couldn’t be better.

Bäckström fished the hand towel from the basket and set it to one side for the time being, in order to devote himself to more essential things, namely the corpse’s quite unbelievable stocks of alcoholic beverages. I’ll be damned if he doesn’t have liquor everywhere, Bäckström thought excitedly.

In the clothes closet there were cases of alcohol. Some were unopened cases, others had only a single bottle missing, and still others had been nipped at longer and harder and most recently by Bäckström himself. Rows of bottles lined up on the floor: cognac, whiskey, gin, vodka, aquavit, as well as a lot of mysterious liqueurs and other shit that ladies and types like Eriksson pour down their throats.

Likewise in the kitchen: a whole pantry and two overhead cupboards full of wine and dessert wine. A number of full wine racks on the kitchen counter and alongside the stove. In the living room was an antique peasant sideboard which, judging by the contents, evidently functioned as a liquor cabinet. On the desk in the office there was a large tray of hammered silver with several carafes filled with amber-colored drinks.

Bäckström made a careful, very discreet culling of this unrestrained excess, but despite the fact that he was exceedingly moderate in what he took, he was forced to borrow an empty suitcase from the victim, as well as a pile of his clean hand towels, so that the contents wouldn’t rattle too terribly much when he drove home.

On his way out he remembered the soiled hand towel and went into the kitchen and rooted among the bags under the sink to find something to put it in. What the hell do you do with soiled hand towels? thought Bäckström. Should they be stored in paper or plastic? Whatever, he thought. Eriksson appeared to have paper bags, and why should he have to do Wiijnbladh’s job? He crumpled the hand towel into a paper bag and called for a taxi on the victim’s phone. What else would you expect? This was a murder investigation, and he had signed for a whole book of taxi vouchers just in case.

On the way home he stopped at the tech squad and asked the taxi to wait on the street while he left the hand towel on Wiijnbladh’s desk along with a collegial, friendly note and wishes for a nice weekend. Then he could finally call it a day and go home.

It was nice to be able to avoid thinking about the liquor store on a Friday, thought Bäckström.

Paperwork was not Jarnebring’s strong suit, and if he had the choice he would rather use his hands for something besides thumbing through binders. At the same time he was not one to desert a colleague either, so it was actually on Holt’s own suggestion that he decided to swing by the homicide squad and check out the situation, see if anything interesting had come in. Nothing had.

Besides, homicide was basically deserted. The only one there was a young colleague from the uniformed police who was sitting by the tip phone, reading a tabloid and looking rather down in the mouth.

“Has anything happened?” Jarnebring asked.

Not much, according to the tip taker. A few bag ladies and drunks had called, but he had kept it short and was able to get rid of them pretty quickly, jotting down the names of anyone who wanted to provide them. Two individuals had also called and reported that they had known the victim. He had given their names to Gunsan for further processing. He’d be going home soon. His supervisor, Detective Inspector Alm, had promised him he could, when Alm had disappeared on urgent duties in town a few hours earlier.

“He said the duty desk would take over the tip line starting at six o’clock,” he explained to Jarnebring.

“Go home and sleep, kid,” said Jarnebring, nodding. “So that you’re wide awake on Monday.”

Then Jarnebring talked with Gunsan, who would soon be done with the entries on the neighbors that had come in after the additional door-to-door inquiries. It had gone unexpectedly well, considering that it was Friday. That was because almost everyone who lived in the victim’s building was conscientious middle-aged or elderly.

The most interesting thing that had happened was that two individuals had called to say they knew the victim.

“Fine folks on the go,” said Gunsan, smiling. “One of them is even a B-list celebrity you may have seen on TV.”

Jarnebring did not have the faintest idea who either of them were, but he took all of Gunsan’s papers with him anyway to read through in peace down in his own office.

“Isn’t it time for you to go home too?” said Jarnebring, smiling at his female civilian colleague. She was the only real police officer in this place since Danielsson lowered the flag, thought Jarnebring. Why hadn’t she ever applied to the police academy?

“Pretty soon,” said Gunsan, smiling. “How about you, old man? Isn’t it high time you went back to your little fiancée and looked after her?”

“It’ll work out,” said Jarnebring, and then he went down to his own office and his new colleague. Gunsan is actually an extremely attractive woman, he thought as he went through the door to the detective squad. It’s a shame she’s not twenty years younger, he thought. If nothing else this showed how prejudiced he was, as Gunsan was only a little older than he was.

“Okay,” Jarnebring said energetically as he poured yet another mug of black coffee. “If we were to summarize the day, what do we know about our victim? So far?”

He didn’t have a large social circle, or so it seemed. At the same time it was large enough to include — in all likelihood — at least one person who had murdered him.

He was unpopular with his coworkers, to say the least. You could read that between the lines of what his boss and closest coworkers had said. It came through pretty clearly in the doorman’s story. At the same time there was nothing concrete to go on.

“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.”