First he had got in the shower, and dried himself carefully afterward, put on his bathrobe, sat down on the sofa, and watched the film the doctor had given him. He watched the whole film. Then he put on his tracksuit, walked halfway round Kungsholmen, and gulped down three low-alcohol beers as soon as he got back in through the door. It hadn’t helped. The eagle had once again flown into the power cables.
In a position like that he had had no option. He had taken one brown and one blue, collapsed like a clubbed seal, and somewhere round about then, between drowsiness and sleep, he had had a divine revelation.
It had been dark and rather foggy in his bedroom, however that could have happened, when suddenly a tall, thin old man in white clothes, with a beard down to his navel, had stepped forward to his bed, put his veined hand on his shoulder, and spoke to him.
‘My son,’ the old man said. ‘My son, are you listening to me?’
What do you mean — ‘Dad’? Bäckström had thought in confusion, since this was a skinny old man with a white beard. Nothing like the red-faced drunken skunk who had been a police sergeant in the Maria district, and who, according to his mad old mother, was the begetter of Bäckström himself.
Lord God, Bäckström thought, suddenly realizing what was going on. Lord God!
‘My son,’ the bearded man repeated. ‘Do you hear what I am saying?’
‘I’m listening, Father,’ Bäckström said.
‘The life you live is no longer whole, but split,’ the old man had rumbled. ‘You have wandered onto the wrong path, my son, you have been listening to false prophets.’
‘Sorry, Dad,’ Bäckström peeped.
‘Go in peace, my son,’ the old man said, patting him on the shoulder again. ‘Make sure you find the right path again. Become a whole person again.’
‘I promise, Father,’ Bäckström said, sitting up in bed and suddenly wide-awake.
The message he had received had been abundantly clear. He had showered once more, put on a pair of trousers, a clean shirt, and a jacket. When he stepped into the street he had raised his eyes to the boundless blue above his round head and thanked his Lord and Creator.
‘Thanks a lot, Dad,’ Bäckström said, and two minutes later he was sitting at his usual table in his favorite neighborhood bar.
‘Where the hell have you been, Bäckström?’ the woman behind the bar had said. She was Finnish and occasionally got a serious going-over in Bäckström’s sturdy Hästens bed, assuming there was nothing better on offer, of course.
‘Murder case,’ Bäckström said in a masculine and concise way. ‘I’ve been hard at it all week, but now I’ve got the pieces in place at last.’
‘Vojne, vojne. It’s a good thing they’ve got you, Bäckström. Sounds like you deserve a little treat,’ the woman had said with a maternal smile.
‘Goes without saying,’ Bäckström said. Then he had ordered a pint and a large chaser before eating.
Smoked sausage with beetroot and potato gratin. For safety’s sake he had backed this up with a couple side dishes of liver pâté and fried eggs. And he had gone on to celebrate the weekend in the traditional way, and by the time he took a taxi to work at nine on Monday morning he had already thrown the crazy doctor’s film in the bin. Besides, you had to look really carefully to see any resemblance at all between him and the bloke in the diaper.
‘False prophets,’ Bäckström said, and snorted.
‘Sorry?’ the taxi driver had said, looking at him in surprise.
‘Solna police station. I won’t mind if we actually get there sometime today,’ Bäckström said, back to being Bäckström again.
20.
When Bäckström arrived in his office he found a note on his desk from one of the cell phone surveillance team. Bäckström’s nuisance call to Stålhammar on Friday afternoon had made its way to a phone tower on the other side of the Öresund, in the center of Copenhagen.
‘I fucking knew it,’ Bäckström growled, as he called Annika Carlsson on her cell.
‘Good morning, Bäckström,’ Carlsson said.
‘Never mind about that,’ Bäckström replied in his most polite manner. ‘It looks like that bastard Stålhammar has run off to Copenhagen.’
‘Not anymore,’ Annika Carlsson said. ‘I’ve just had a call from reception. Apparently he’s sitting downstairs and wants to talk to us.’
Ten minutes later Bäckström, Carlsson, and Stålhammar were sitting in one of the crime unit’s interview rooms. Stålhammar looked like he’d had a hectic weekend, to judge by his clothes and general appearance. Three days’ stubble; sweaty, unwashed clothes; and the smell of old and new drinking. But otherwise he was much the same. A large, thickset man, with sharp, furrowed facial features and without an ounce of fat on his muscular body.
‘This is an awful business, Bäckström,’ Stålhammar said, rubbing the corner of his eye with his right knuckles. ‘What sort of bastard would go and kill Kalle?’
‘We were hoping you might be able to help us with that question,’ Bäckström said. ‘We’ve been looking for you for several days.’
‘I headed off to Malmö on Thursday morning,’ Stålhammar said, rubbing his red eyes. ‘That must have been when it happened, if I’ve understood correctly?’
‘What were you doing in Malmö?’ Bäckström asked. I’m the one who asks the questions here, he thought.
‘I’ve got an old flame down there. Damn fine woman, so when Kalle and I picked a winner on Wednesday and I suddenly had ten thousand in my pocket, it wasn’t a hard decision. I got the train down. Can’t stand planes. Way too fucking cramped. You have to be Japanese with no legs to fit in those seats. And no cart service either. I caught the morning train. Got there just after lunchtime.’
‘Has she got a name?’ Bäckström asked.
‘Who?’ Stålhammar said, looking at Annika Carlsson in surprise.
‘Your old flame down in Malmö,’ Bäckström clarified.
‘ ’Course she has,’ Stålhammar said. ‘Marja Olsson. Lives at number four Staffansvägen. She’s in the phonebook. She works as a staff nurse at the hospital down there. She picked me up from Malmö Central. You’re welcome to call her if you don’t believe me.’
‘What did you do after that?’ Bäckström asked.
‘After that we didn’t leave the house until Friday, when we went to Copenhagen for a proper lunch. We carried on all day and half the night.’
‘And then?’
‘Well, then we came back. Sometime early in the morning. To Malmö, I mean. Back to Marja’s, and we carried on as usual again. Went out and got supplies before the shops shut. Then we got going again.’
‘You got going again?’
‘Sure,’ Stålhammar said with a sigh. ‘She’s in seriously good shape, that girl, and my dander was up. I don’t suppose we got out of bed until Sunday evening when Flash called on my cell to tell me what had happened.’
‘Flash?’
‘Björn Johansson. Another old friend from school. You probably know him? He’s fairly well known around these parts. An old Solna character. Used to run Flash Electricals down in Sundbyberg, but now his boy’s taken over. So he told me what had happened, and it didn’t feel right to hang about in Malmö, so I got the night train up to help you find the bastard who killed Kalle.’
‘That was kind of you, Roland,’ Bäckström said. Looks like old Roly did some thinking somewhere in all that drinking and decided to put up a bit of resistance, he thought.
‘Well, what the hell. Of course I’m going to help. So here I am,’ he clarified.