‘You want to give Bäckström something else to think about?’ Holt said.
‘Exactly,’ the county police chief said. ‘Serious violent crimes seem to be the only thing in his head anyway. And we’re not exactly short of those in the Western District.’
‘Okay,’ Anna Holt said. ‘I promise to try my best, but before I make a decision I want to talk to the person who would be his immediate superior and hear what he thinks about it. I owe him that much.’
‘Go ahead, Anna,’ the county police chief said. ‘Just so you know, I’ve got my fingers crossed.’
‘Bäckström?’ said Superintendent Toivonen, head of the crime unit in the Western District. ‘We’re talking about Evert Bäckström? About him working under me?’
‘Yes,’ Holt said. Toivonen, she thought. A legend within the Stockholm Police. Toivonen, who never backed away, never wasted time on pleasantries. Who always said what he thought and felt.
‘Yes,’ Holt repeated. ‘I can understand that you might feel a certain reluctance.’
‘Fine,’ Toivonen said, shrugging. ‘I have no problem with Bäckström. If he starts causing trouble, he’s the one who’s going to have a problem.’
‘Fine?’ Holt repeated. What’s he saying? she thought.
‘Completely fine,’ Toivonen said with a nod. ‘When’s he coming?’
At last, Toivonen thought, as he left his boss. It had taken twenty-five years, but now at last it was time. Even though he had almost given up hope of ever having the chance to get even for all their past dealings. Just you wait, you fat little bastard, damn you, Toivonen thought, and the subject of his anger was his new colleague, Detective Superintendent Evert Bäckström.
Toivonen hadn’t been up-front with his boss, Anna Holt. More than twenty-five years ago, when he was a young trainee officer — a ‘fox,’ as they were known in those days, and still are to officers of Toivonen’s generation — he had done three months’ work experience on the violent crime unit in central Stockholm. His supervisor had been Detective Inspector Evert Bäckström.
Instead of trying to teach the ‘fucking fox’ anything about detection work, Bäckström had made him into his personal slave. In spite of Toivonen’s proud background, generations of peasants and warriors from Karelia, Bäckström had treated him as a Russian serf. Used him to sort the chaos on Bäckström’s desk, empty his wastepaper bin, make coffee, buy pastries, drive Bäckström around the city in a police car on mysterious errands that seldom seemed to have anything to do with work, stopping to buy hot dogs and mash for him whenever he got hungry. And he had had to pay with his meager trainee’s wages, since Bäckström had always left his wallet in his office. Once, when they had been detailed to help guard an embassy, Bäckström had even made him polish his shoes for him and, when they got there, had presented him to the security staff as ‘my own fucking fox, a bastard Finn, you know.’
Toivonen had been Swedish wrestling champion on several occasions, Greco-Roman as well as freestyle, and he could easily have broken every bone in Bäckström’s body without even taking his hands out of his pockets. The thought was constantly there in the back of his mind, but because he had decided to become a police officer, a proper police officer, unlike his supervisor, he had gritted his teeth and resisted the urge. Generations of Karelian peasants and warriors had been adding bark to their bread since time immemorial. Twenty-five years later things were looking brighter. Considerably brighter.
That night Toivonen had had the most delightful dream. First he had softened up the fat little bastard with a standard Lindén hold, then tried both full and half nelsons, plus a few other tricks that used to get you disqualified in the days when he was active. Now that Bäckström was warmed up, he had gone on to a series of flying mares in quick succession. He had concluded with a scissors hold around his fat little neck. And there he lay, twenty-five years later, lilac blue in the face and flailing with his fat little hands while Toivonen panted with satisfaction and squeezed just a bit tighter.
26.
A couple years before he ended up with the Solna Police, Superintendent Evert Bäckström had been expelled from his natural habitat in the National Criminal Investigation Department to the property tracing department of Stockholm Police. Or the lost property store, as all proper police officers, Bäckström included, called this final resting place for stolen bicycles, lost wallets, and wayward police souls.
Bäckström was the victim of evil machinations. His former boss, Lars Martin Johansson, a bastard Lapp, eater of fermented herring and closet socialist, simply hadn’t been able to deal with Bäckström’s successful battle with increasingly organized crime. Instead he had woven a rope from all the individual slanderous strands, hung it round Bäckström’s neck, and kicked the chair from beneath him himself.
The job in the lost property store was obviously a form of punishment. During the two years that followed Bäckström had been forced to look for stolen bicycles, an industrial digger that had disappeared, a yacht that turned out to have sunk in the outer archipelago, various items of environmentally hazardous waste, and barrels of shit. It would have broken the strongest man, but Bäckström had somehow put up with it. He had made the best of things. He had picked up one of his old contacts, a renowned art dealer, and had got a good tip-off, found a stolen oil painting worth fifty million, and made a nice little bit on the side while his cretinous bosses stole the glory from him. He was used to that, and he could live with it.
In the autumn of the previous year the same informant had given him some interesting information about who had killed Prime Minister Olof Palme, and he hadn’t hesitated for a second. Fairly soon he had uncovered both the murder weapon and a cabal of four upstanding citizens. All of them undoubtedly deeply involved in the murder. They had shared roots going back many years. Right back to the sixties, when they all studied law together at Stockholm University and spent their free time on various perverse and criminal activities. Among other things, they had a secret society that they called Friends of the Cunt.
When Bäckström had been on the point of questioning one of them, who happened to be a former director of the Public Prosecution Authority and a current member of parliament for the Christian Democrats, the shadowy forces that Bäckström was on the trail of had hit back and tried to destroy him. His archenemy, Lars Martin Johansson, who had spent his whole life as the lackey of those in power, had sent him to the police state’s own group of professional killers, the National Rapid-Response Unit. They had done their best to try to get rid of Bäckström, on one occasion throwing a shock grenade at his head. When they failed miserably in their objective, they had locked him away in a mental hospital.
But Bäckström got back on his feet, turned round, and hit back. Against all the odds. He had lined up the Police Officers’ Association on his side, as well as powerful forces within the media and evidently one or two influential but anonymous figures who must secretly have sympathized with his struggle for basic justice. A solitary figure is seldom strong — that was the bitter truth — but Bäckström had shown on more than one occasion that he was stronger than everyone else.
After only a few months he had been back at work. New piles of waste, but at the same time good opportunities to do a bit of work on the side for people who deserved it. All thoughts of finally solving the murder of the prime minister had been temporarily laid aside. Bäckström’s victory had had its price, admittedly, but he had a long memory, and sooner or later he would get the chance to call in all outstanding debts.