‘What does he have to say, then?’ Bäckström asked.
‘That he saw Stålhammar come in through the door of the building they both live in at approximately quarter to eleven on Wednesday evening. He’s certain it was Stålhammar he saw, but because he doesn’t like him very much and usually avoids talking to him, he waited for a minute or so before going inside himself.
‘Okay,’ Bäckström said. ‘How the hell can he be so sure, and what was he doing out in the middle of the night? How can he be so sure it was quarter to eleven? And was he even sober?’ Bäckström said. ‘It’s probably the same old story. He’s got his days mixed up. Or got the time wrong by an hour or so. Or seen someone else entirely. Or he’s just making the whole thing up because he wants to seem important, or because he wants to fuck up Stålhammar.’
‘Let’s not get carried away, Bäckström,’ Alm said, loving every second of this. ‘If what the witness says is true, then Stålhammar could hardly have murdered Danielsson. At the very least, things can’t have happened the way we’ve been assuming. Not immediately after half past ten that evening.
‘To work through this in order,’ Alm went on. ‘Every evening after the late news on TV Four, the one that ends with the weather at half past ten in the evening, Englund takes his dachshund out. He always goes for the same walk round the block, and it always takes him and the dog about quarter of an hour. But not that evening, because when he is about to turn right, up onto the esplanade, he gets stopped by a uniformed police officer who more or less shoos him back the way he came. So back he goes. Reluctantly, because he is as curious as the next man. But when nothing happens, he stops again down on Järnvägsgatan and listens for a few minutes, then carries on walking home. When he reaches the block next to his, some twenty meters from his own door, he sees Stålhammar go inside the building.’
‘What were our uniformed colleagues up to there, then?’ Bäckström asked.
‘They’d cordoned off the esplanade because they were preparing a raid on a flat a hundred meters down the road. The result of a tip-off about someone who was suspected of involvement in the shootings and armed robbery out at Bromma a couple days before.’
‘The timings,’ Bäckström said. ‘What does this tell us about the timings?’
‘To start with, it must have been after half past ten in the evening of Wednesday, May fourteenth. There’s no other possibility. The raid started then, with our uniformed colleagues trying to shut the area off.’
‘He could have stood there gawping with his dog for half an hour,’ Bäckström said. ‘How the hell can you be so certain that he didn’t?’
‘You can never be entirely certain,’ Alm said. ‘I just know what he says, and I sat for two hours questioning him about this.’
‘So what else has he got to say?’ Bäckström said. ‘It would be useful to know.’ Preferably before Christmas, he thought.
‘He says he waited a few minutes, then he went home, saw Stålhammar going in the door — he waited a couple minutes so that he wouldn’t have to talk to him, then he went in himself and took the lift up to his flat. As soon as he got through the door he calls his son. Calls from his cell to his son’s cell. Simply out of curiosity, and his son is already up on the esplanade when his dad calls, because the paper had received a tip-off about what was going on.
‘By then it was ten minutes to eleven, according to the phone records that we checked out this morning,’ Alm concluded.
‘So you say,’ Bäckström said, glowering crossly at his colleague. ‘Hasn’t the old goat got a landline in his flat?’
‘Yes,’ Alm said, ‘and I know what you’re thinking, Bäckström. I’m only telling you what he told me.’
‘You can’t help wondering why he called on his cell phone,’ Bäckström said. ‘A mean old prick like that. Why use his cell?’
‘Because he already had it in his hand when he walked into his apartment. That’s what he says,’ Alm said.
‘I’m sorry, Bäckström,’ Alm went on, but didn’t seem the slightest bit sorry. ‘Pretty much everything backs up what Iron Man says. That he left Danielsson at half past ten, went straight home, and was in his apartment at quarter to eleven.’
Bäckström suggested taking a break. The forensics experts had to leave. Had important things to get on with. And Toivonen had also taken the opportunity to go. For some reason he seemed considerably more cheerful than he had when he arrived. He even nodded encouragingly to Bäckström as he left.
‘Congratulations, Bäckström,’ Toivonen said. ‘Good to see that you’re back to your old self again.’
22.
Another crazy witness, Bäckström thought, a quarter of an hour later, when the investigating team had reconvened. At worst, it just meant that Stålhammar had gone back to Hasselstigen later that night to kill and rob Karl Danielsson. Just what you’d expect from someone like Iron Man. Sitting there thinking at home in Järnvägsgatan as he drank the last few drops, then suddenly the alcoholic haze inside his head lifted and it dawned on him that twenty thousand is twice as much as ten thousand. Whereupon he rolled back to Danielsson’s and suggested that they carry on partying. He dressed himself up in the raincoat, slippers, and washing-up gloves, then whacked him with his own saucepan lid. That could very easily have been what happened, he thought.
‘Thoughts?’ Bäckström said, looking round at the other five people in the room. Five mental cases, if you asked him. One Russian, one pretty little darkie, one attack dyke, one retarded folk dancer, and one Woodentop. The curse of being in charge, he thought.
‘Well, I for one am not prepared to let go of Stålhammar,’ Annika Carlsson said, smiling encouragingly at her boss.
And it takes a dyke to say it, Bäckström thought.
‘I’m listening,’ he said.
‘Wouldn’t it be a bit weird if someone entirely new just appeared in Danielsson’s flat right after Stålhammar left?’ Carlsson said, looking at Alm.
‘Maybe he stood and waited for him to go,’ Alm said. ‘So that he could be alone with his victim.’
‘And he was let in too,’ Detective Inspector Carlsson persisted. ‘Which surely suggests that it must have been another of Danielsson’s old friends? Have we had time to go through them all yet, by the way?’ she asked, nodding toward Alm.
‘Still working on it,’ Alm said, shrugging uncomfortably.
‘I’m probably inclined to agree with Bäckström and Annika,’ Nadja Högberg said. ‘If you grew up in the old Soviet Union like I did, you stop believing in coincidence, and we’ve got no information that suggests that anyone was watching Danielsson’s flat. And I’m not really too keen on our witness either. How can he be so sure that it was Stålhammar he saw? A man he seems to dislike so intensely. Can we really rule out that he was seeing what he wanted to see? And the fact that he called his son just before eleven doesn’t have to have anything at all to do with our case. It might well be that he was just curious about all the police he saw up on the esplanade. Maybe he just wanted to tip off his son that something was going on. Considering the son works as a photographer on a newspaper, I mean. And whyever would he phone him on his cell if he was inside his flat? We mustn’t forget that. This witness doesn’t feel sound.’
One dyke plus one Russian, Bäckström thought. Mind you, she’s shrewd for a Russian.