“You’ll get along fine without me, won’t you?” he asked rhetorically. “I want the key back when you’re through.”
It was Wiijnbladh who opened. Inside the door was a coat closet and to the right a bathroom with a shower. Straight ahead a smaller room where the only window was wide open. Altogether it might amount to at the most sixty square feet.
“You may as well talk to his neighbors while I take a few pictures.” Wiijnbladh looked inquiringly at Bäckström.
Bäckström nodded in agreement. This suited him fine. It was cold as an Eskimo’s asshole in there and damned if he was going to get pneumonia on account of a crazy window jumper.
While Wiijnbladh took his pictures Bäckström’s luck continued to hold. He looked in the kitchen-empty-and, to be on the safe side, in the refrigerator. Nothing appeared especially tempting, however, and the milk cartons, plastic-wrapped cucumbers, and various cans with contents unknown were all labeled with the names of students. My God, what pigs, thought Bäckström. Not even a beer or a soda for a thirsty policeman. He knocked and tried all the doors. They were locked, and if there was anyone home, he or she clearly didn’t intend to open the door in any event. Luck was still on his side.
The room was small, untidy, and sparsely furnished, with the standard assortment of worn-out furniture: a bed, a nightstand, a wall-mounted bed lamp, in the opposite corner a simple reading chair with a floor lamp, toward the window wall a bookshelf, and on the other side of the window a desk and a chair.
“Damn, what a cozy place he has,” said Bäckström.
People who didn’t work, students for example, shouldn’t have food or a roof over their head, but if necessary he could tolerate this. The present occupant didn’t seem to have settled in for a long stay, and he didn’t seem to be especially orderly. The personal effects were few: a suitcase, a few clothes, some books with titles in English. On the unmade bed was a short quilted jacket, under the bed a pair of well-worn shoes. It was no opium den, but if the person who was living here didn’t pull himself together it would soon be a lot like one.
The desk was the most organized. There were papers and envelopes, pens, paper clips, an eraser, and a few cassettes with colored ribbon for the handy little portable electric typewriter that was placed in the middle of the desk. In addition a paper with a text in English was sitting in the typewriter cylinder, only a half dozen lines but revealing enough for a pro like Wiijnbladh.
“If I were to summarize,” Wiijnbladh began with a contented expression, “I think probably all we have seen speaks for a suicide. If you see the window there,” Wiijnbladh pointed toward the now-closed window, where the broken window catch lay on the floor below, “you see that he has broken the catch loose. Otherwise it can only be opened a few inches. If you want to air out or something.”
Bäckström nodded contentedly. Wiijnbladh was certainly a long-winded bastard, but this sounded like music to his ears.
“Yes, and then you have the message he left in the typewriter. It’s in English and I would definitely say that it exudes a great weariness with life, a sort of…”
Wiijnbladh looked for words, but since his knowledge of English was limited, to put it mildly, it wasn’t all that easy.
“Yes, a typical suicide note, quite simply.” Wiijnbladh nodded with extra emphasis.
Bäckström nodded too. They were in the same boat, after all, so he could grant him that. “Yes, then we mustn’t forget the front door. It was locked from inside,” he said.
“Certainly.” Wiijnbladh nodded. With a common, patented catch, he thought. How stupid can you really be?
“Okay then. I think we’re about done here.” Bäckström looked at his watch. It was only a quarter past ten, and if he hurried back to the after-hours unit he should even have time to call the old man with the dog who’d seen him jump-that little extra concluding detail that was the mark of a completely unobjectionable investigation-and soon he’d be sitting in the bar, enjoying a well-earned beer.
Johansson and his companion had left the restaurant in the good spirits that naturally arise when certain not entirely simple decisions have been postponed while at the same time possibilities for choice still remain. They walked together to her hotel down by Slussen, and Johansson wasn’t hard to convince when she suggested a last beer in the hotel bar.
“The course ends in a week. Any chance you’ll show up then?” The tensions had relaxed. She sat leaning forward. She smiled and lightly drew her nails over the back of Johansson’s right hand. She herself had narrow, strong hands.
Johansson shook his head regretfully.
“In a week I’ll be sitting on a plane to the U.S. I’m going to meet a lot of people from Interpol and the FBI.” Johansson gave a faint sigh. Sometimes I wonder if there’s someone up there who’s actively out to get me, or if I’m just bad at planning.
She sighed too. “You certainly are leading a boring life. I’m going to a course in Härnösand with our civilian employees. It’s going to be really exciting.” Now she smiled again.
Johansson saw the opportunity and laced his hand into hers. Just lightly, though, very lightly. Skin touching skin. No pressure.
“I’m going to buy something nice for you as a Christmas present. Something we don’t have here.”
“A solid gold sheriff’s badge?” She giggled and squeezed his hand harder.
“Yes,” said Johansson. “Or perhaps one of those blue baseball caps that say FBI.”
Bäckström was still at the after-hours unit despite the fact that it was half an hour past midnight, and he was sour as vinegar. Wiijnbladh and he had sealed the door to the do-it-yourselfer’s room before ten-thirty, and by dawn next day the whole sorry story would be lying on the desk of the officer in charge at Östermalm. Real policemen like him and Wiijnbladh shouldn’t be involved with this kind of shit. The peasant police in the local precincts could deal with it.
Everything had gone like a charm, and they were just about to close the door to the corridor when that damn black guy had shown up together with some Swedish student whore with purple lipstick, and you didn’t have to be a policeman to figure out what the two of them had in mind. He’d also been obstinate in some incoherent African English. He refused to move and wanted to know what the hell they were doing in his corridor. Bäckström’s only thought was to bypass the piece of shit and take the elevator down, although he really ought to have called for a patrol car with two types like Oredsson in it, but naturally the coward Wiijnbladh got involved. He had shown his ID and started negotiating with the gook in his own lousy English. Then the whore had interfered too, partly in Swedish and partly in English, and the misery had broken loose in earnest. He couldn’t have taken his own life, he was a really fine guy, not the least bit depressed, blah blah blah.
Finally Bäckström had been forced to crack down. He’d told them to call on Monday, and to be on the safe side he’d given them the name and extension of a colleague in the bureau who was almost always on sick leave this time of year because of his severe alcohol problem. They were finally able to drive away after a quarter hour of his life had gone down the toilet.
When at last he sat down behind his desk to tie up all the loose threads in this sorry story, it was time for the next lunatic. That fat clod Stridh clearly had his work orders turned upside down and had submitted an interrogation with the witness. Two closely spaced typewritten pages, for something you could be done with in ten lines, and completely incomprehensible throughout. According to the witness, the early retired Gustav Adolf Nilsson, it was clearly not he but his mutt who had heard that lunatic Krassner jump out the window. The same mutt who, despite his good hearing, had been killed by a mysteriously falling shoe.