Лейф Перссон - Another Time, Another Life

Sounds almost too good to be true, Jarnebring had thought. Because he was also an incorrigible optimist and interested in both hunting and fishing, he had been sitting there for the past two hours. The last half hour, however, had felt a little long, and to get a break from the tedium he had turned on the police radio to listen to the action playing out down in City.

Despite the cacophony on the radio he had also heard the call about an ongoing violent crime in an apartment on Rådmansgatan, but because he was familiar with the address and those who lived there — a nice block with conscientious middle-aged, middle-class residents — he understood at once that the person who had called was certainly an older woman who would not get worked up unnecessarily.

He still thought that when the second call came in, but he also noted that the voice of his female colleague on the radio was starting to sound a trifle dejected. So when a short time later she dispatched the call for the third time, now actually sounding a little beleaguered, he sighed, took the radio microphone from its holder, and replied.

“Jarnebring here,” he said into the microphone. “Can I help you, little lady?” What meatballs, he thought sourly.

So the Iranian lived on, and presumably he and the informant were sitting in a completely different part of the city chowing down couscous and roast goat, or whatever that sort usually ate, while they laughed their heads off at all the dumb cops cultivating their hemorrhoids in the worn-down front seat of an increasingly chilly unmarked car.

“Let’s forget about the gook,” said Jarnebring to his colleague. “Drive to Rådmansgatan.”

She merely nodded without answering. She looked surly, thought Jarnebring. Probably because of that “little lady” remark. She was rather good-looking, if you liked dark-haired ladies. Personally he preferred blondes. And the occasional redhead, provided she was a genuine redhead. Although of course they weren’t that common, he thought.

But she could drive a car, he had to admit that, for in just over two minutes and after two U-turns she had taken them from the west end of Tegnérgatan to the address in question on Rådmansgatan. And en route he had obtained an entry code to the outside door from the “little lady” at the command center. On the other hand she had not produced a key to the apartment door, but he could take care of that with the help of the bag of police accessories he kept in the storage compartment of the car.

“Let’s do this,” said Jarnebring as she stopped the car outside the entryway on Rådmansgatan. “I’ll take the walkie-talkie and check the apartment, and you kill anyone who tries to sneak out onto the street.”

Now she actually smiled. She really is good-looking, thought Jarnebring as he disappeared through the entryway with his bag and the walkie-talkie. While he was sprinting up the stairs he suddenly felt more exhilarated than he had in a long time.

His delight was short-lived. Jarnebring stopped at the third floor to get an overview: rectangular stairwell, four apartments, two doors at an angle to each other at each end. The name of the victim was Eriksson and his door was farthest away. To the left of it was an ornate brass plate with the surname of the person who had called central command and introduced herself as “Mrs. Westergren, Ingrid Westergren.”

Jarnebring tiptoed up to the door to Eriksson’s apartment. Silent as a grave, not a movement anywhere. He carefully tried the door handle. The door was locked, and when he bent down to peep in through the mail slot, at the same time as he loosened the holster strap that secured his service weapon, in the corner of his eye he saw a faint dent not half an inch long in the dark glazed wood on Mrs. Westergren’s door. Because the dent was at a level with Eriksson’s door handle and the door lacked a doorstop, he realized at once what had happened.

The perpetrator or perpetrators had not tried to break into Mrs. Westergren’s, as she had told the radio dispatcher. On the other hand it was probable that someone had thrown open Eriksson’s door in great haste, whereupon his door handle had struck Mrs. Westergren’s door. Without thinking about it, he buttoned the strap on his pistol handle again, carefully opened the mail slot slightly, and peeked in.

He had done this a hundred times before during his life as a police officer, and on a few occasions it had struck him that this might just be his last action on the job, because he might find himself looking straight into the barrels of a shotgun. But he did not think that way very often; fortunately he did not have that disposition. And it hadn’t happened now. What he saw was good enough.

There was a light on in the hall. Straight ahead was a living room behind a pair of open, glazed double doors.

In the living room there was a couch, and in front of the couch a coffee table, approximately twenty or twenty-five feet from the outside door. The coffee table had been overturned and there was a lot of blood on the light parquet floor. Squeezed between the couch and the coffee table was a motionless man on his stomach. It was not a comfortable position, and you didn’t need to be a police officer like Jarnebring to figure out that the man had not chosen to lie down there voluntarily.

Oh shit, thought Jarnebring, straightening up. People never can behave decently to each other.

Then he tapped out the hinges on the door and went into the apartment.

First he made sure the victim really was dead. He was, even if he did not appear to have been dead for very long. He had bled heavily from both his nose and mouth. His shirt was soaked through with blood from a wound that seemed to be high up on the left side of his back.

Probably stabbed with a knife, thought Jarnebring. Lungs, heart, major organs were penetrated; trying to resuscitate him would be wasted effort, he thought.

Then he straightened up, drew his service weapon, and carefully searched through the apartment to make certain that the victim was not only dead but also alone at home. Three rooms, hall, kitchen, bathroom, separate toilet, a large clothes closet, a total of about a thousand square feet, strikingly clean and neat, and there was nothing to suggest anything other than that the victim had had sole use of the apartment.

Jarnebring was careful about where he set his feet, and he kept his fingers under control the whole time out of consideration for the crime technicians, but this didn’t prevent him from peeking under the bed, behind the shower curtain in the bathroom, and in the darkest corners of the clothes closet. He had found more than one perpetrator that way over the years.

But not this time, this time it was empty.

The rest was pure routine. He made contact with the command center on the radio. They promised to send people — “on the double” — from the duty desk and the tech squad, as well as reinforcements from the uniformed police. A murder took precedence even over degenerate political demonstrations.

On the other hand, the canine patrol that Jarnebring tried to requisition could not be mobilized. The four-legged colleagues that were on duty had been busy with other things between their jaws for the past few hours. On the other hand, taxi drivers would be questioned as to whether they’d had any interesting fares to and from the victim’s address.

While they waited, Jarnebring and his female colleague did what they could. The first crime scene barriers were put in place. They searched within the building and out toward the street where the victim lived, the courtyard and back building as well. They checked interesting entryways in the vicinity and noted license numbers on all cars parked in the area, in case the perpetrator was in such a hurry that he had not managed to take the car in which he might have arrived. The growing crowd of curious people who had gathered down on the street were gradually questioned, and very soon the plan was to start knocking on doors in a more organized manner.