“Any examples? Of strange things he said.”
“Yes,” said Henning and sighed. “One evening when we were out having dinner, this must have been six months before he died, he delivered a long monologue about how he would like to stand on his balcony watching Rome burn, but because that wasn’t possible he would have to be content with beating up and dominating any woman who crossed his path.”
“So what did he mean by that?”
“I’m afraid he meant exactly what he said,” Henning said and sighed.
“Anything else that you recall?” asked Mattei.
“He told me a few things about himself. Very vulgar things, actually, that no one would be particularly amused to hear. Personally I wasn’t the least bit amused.”
“Give me an example,” said Holt, with a warning glance in Mattei’s direction.
“When he was studying law at the university he seems to have started a peculiar society with a few of his fellow students at the law school. A somewhat strange name, to say the least. For their society, that is.”
“So what was it called?” asked Holt.
“The Friends of Cunt,” said Henning with an apologetic glance toward Mattei.
“The Friends of Cunt,” Holt repeated.
“Yes,” sighed Henning, “and it might possibly be excused as an eruption of youthful high spirits and general poor judgment, but that wasn’t his point when he was telling the story.”
“So what was his point?”
“That he’d been expelled,” said Henning. “His three friends in the society expelled him. There were only four of them. A small society, I should think. Waltin was expelled by the others. For reasons I’ve already hinted at.”
“That he beat women up before he slept with them,” said Holt.
“More or less,” said Henning. “And a few other things too.”
“Such as?”
“That he would tie them up, among other things. Shave their pubic hair and that kind of thing. Photograph them after he’d tied them up.”
“When was he expelled by the other members of the society?”
“Well. They had a party with a few young women they got hold of. At home with Waltin, if I understand it right. It evidently degenerated, according to the other members. Not according to Waltin. He was very amused as he was telling the story.”
“These other members. Waltin didn’t mention any names?”
“Sure,” said Henning. “That was how he started in on this story. We started talking about one of them in a completely different context, and that was when he said he had once belonged to the same society.”
“So what is his name?”
“A very well-known individual, I’m afraid.”
“I’m listening,” said Holt.
“Nowadays he’s a member of parliament for the Christian Democrats,” said Henning with a deep sigh.
“And his name is?”
“Let me think about that,” said Henning, shaking his head. “This is forty years ago, after all,” he added.
“We can discuss that before we leave,” said Holt.
“Wonder who the other two were?” said Holt in the police car on their way back to headquarters.
“Our member of parliament perhaps remembers,” said Mattei. “I mean, just a small society. He must remember anyway?”
“Shall you or I talk with him?” said Holt.
“I demand to be present,” said Mattei. “Otherwise I’m resigning from the police.”
“Let’s think about it,” said Holt and sighed. “It’s not completely given that this has anything to do with the matter,” she added.
“I think it probably does,” Mattei objected. “If you’re expelled from a society like that, it definitely has something to do with the matter.”
“We’ll think about it,” Holt decided. Sometimes Lisa can be completely merciless, she thought.
Before Anna Holt went home for the day, she called up an old colleague she had met during her time at SePo. Nowadays he was regional head of the local police in a district outside Kristianstad in Skåne, where Claes Waltin’s aged father owned a large estate that had been in the family for several generations.
“Robert Waltin. Of course we know him. Something of a local celebrity down here. Nosy question: Why do you want to talk about him?”
“For informational purposes, about another individual that we’re looking at,” said Holt. “He’s not suspected of anything, but when I discovered how old he is I thought it was best to hear from you whether there was any point in trying to talk with him,” Holt clarified.
“Depends,” said her colleague. “What you want to talk about, that is. I’m sure you know whose father he was?”
“Former superintendent Claes Waltin.”
“One and the same. So the apple didn’t land very far from the pear tree. There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with the old man’s mind. Still drives around in his old Mercedes spreading terror on the local roads. I’ve tried to talk with him about that. But it was completely meaningless. We tried to take away his driver’s license, but we had to reverse ourselves on that.”
“Do you have any suggestions? If I were to make an attempt?”
“Say that you’ve decided to investigate the murder of his son,” said her colleague. “Then he’s never going to stop talking. He’s been harping about that every single time I or any of my associates has had contact with him because he’s been driving like a lunatic, tearing down the neighbor’s sheep fence, or suing someone for placing a manure pile upwind of his house. All the kinds of things that extremists do to promote neighborly harmony out here in the country. Then he always talks about all the shit we’re involved in to avoid devoting ourselves to essential things. For example, that the socialist administration murdered his son. That’s what he calls them. The socialist administration or the socialist mafia.”
“I get the sense that Claes Waltin drowned,” said Holt.
“In that case you should be careful about saying so. He’s an uncommonly repulsive old bastard,” Holt’s colleague observed. He was born in the district where he was now chief.
54
Bäckström was on the third day of his weeklong imprisonment. The camp to which he had been transported was a former summer camp for children up in Roslagen. A number of barracks-like buildings scattered on a forested hill above a wind-blown reed cove. Complete with a rotted pier and a broken rowboat shipwrecked on the embankment. Paper-thin walls in the buildings where they were staying. Iron beds made for poor children, with banana-shaped bedstead bottoms and old horsehair mattresses from the days of the Second World War. Beds that you had to make yourself. Beds that were lined up in hovel-like rooms you were expected to share with another brother in misfortune.
Although Bäckström had luck. He wound up with a colleague from the traffic police in Uppsala who seemed relatively normal and just like him had escaped all these years until yet another new female police chief sank her claws in him. Besides his roommate had had the foresight to hide a suitcase with beer and aquavit under a nearby outhouse before he registered at reception.
Once there you were lost. Bäckström realized this as soon as he came up to the counter and talked with the attack dyke running the check-in.
“Cell phone,” she said, looking dictatorially at Bäckström. “All course participants must turn in their cell phones.”
“I didn’t think you could bring your cell phone with you,” Bäckström lied with an innocent expression. “I mean, they are extremely annoying if you’re going to be at a course and have to concentrate.” Hope the piece of shit doesn’t ring while I’m standing here, he thought. Especially as he’d stuffed it in his briefs as soon as he got on the bus they drove up in.
“You left your cell phone at home,” said the receptionist, looking at him suspiciously.
“Of course,” said Bäckström. “I mean, it’s extremely annoying if you’re going to be at a course and have to concentrate. A good initiative you’ve taken, I think.” Now suck on that, you little sow, he thought.