‘Done,’ said Annika Carlsson, who was already thinking about something else. What’s this really all about? Annika Carlsson thought. This is just getting more and more peculiar, she thought.
31.
While his colleagues were presumably running around like headless chickens, Bäckström had paid a visit to a discreet restaurant in the center of Solna. He had eaten pork chops with mushrooms in a cream sauce and potato croquettes, washed down with beer. He had even downed a couple quick shots while he kept a close eye on the door. It was far from out of the question that Toivonen and Niemi might try to do some crafty drinking in working hours, and he wasn’t the sort who wanted to be taken by surprise by a couple Finnish bastards.
After a cup of coffee and a little Napoleon cake, and a period of meditation and reflection, he had returned to the police station. Strengthened in both mind and body, he had gone in via the garage and met his good friend, the garage attendant.
‘You want to borrow the shack and take the weight off your feet for a while?’ his compadre said.
‘Well, if it’s free,’ Bäckström said.
‘Go ahead. The drugs lads were out all night on a job, so they’re at home snoring in their pigsties.’
‘Wake me in a couple hours,’ Bäckström said. ‘I’ve been at it pretty much for twenty-four hours now, so it’s high time I had a bit of a rest.’
Two hours later he was sitting in his office. His head clear as glass, his tongue sharp as a razor, and the first one to experience this was their prosecutor, who called to let him know that she had released Roland Stålhammar from custody.
The situation had become more complicated. According to the prosecutor, it didn’t look like Danielsson was just an ordinary pisshead. And that was putting it mildly. She would have been delighted if she had just a tenth of the money he had.
The same thing seemed to go for Stålhammar. He didn’t look like an ordinary pisshead either. He was also a former colleague of Bäckström’s, and given the new facts that had emerged about the victim, it was entirely feasible that the motive and perpetrator were completely unlike those you would expect to see in an ordinary fight between two completely ordinary pissheads.
‘Absolutely,’ Bäckström said. ‘I completely agree with you. No matter what we might think about pissheads like Stålhammar, we mustn’t forget that the vast majority of pissheads don’t actually beat anyone to death or even get beaten to death. In fact, the number of pissheads that beat someone to death is pretty much exactly the same as the number of pissheads that get beaten to death.’
‘How do you mean?’ the prosecutor said suspiciously.
‘That Stålhammar isn’t an ordinary pisshead,’ Bäckström said. There, that gave her something to chew on, a real Mensa test, he thought, as he hung up.
Then he had taken out a pen and paper and spent the next two hours listing all the main and subsidiary lines of inquiry of his case. He concluded by writing a list of things that his colleagues needed to do. Presumably they had all learned to read by now, Bäckström thought, glancing at the clock. Five o’clock already, and high time he went home, but just as he realized this he was interrupted by a knock on his door.
‘Come in,’ Bäckström grunted.
‘Sorry to disturb you,’ Nadja Högberg said. ‘I know it’s time to go home now, at least that’s what I was thinking, but before you go I wanted to give you this,’ she said, handing over a plastic bag that, to judge by its shape, contained a very large bottle. Vodka, and a whole liter at that — Russian, to judge by the label, a brand that he didn’t know and couldn’t read either.
‘And to what do I owe this honor?’ Bäckström said with a cheerful expression. ‘Come in and sit down, and shut the door so we don’t start tongues wagging.’
‘Our little bet,’ Nadja said. ‘I’ve been feeling guilty about it.’
‘I thought I was the one who owed you a bottle. I was actually thinking of stopping off on the way home and getting one for you,’ Bäckström lied. ‘Feeling guilty? What makes you say that?’
‘Even before we made our wager, I was starting to suspect that Danielsson might have a whole lot of money,’ Nadja said. ‘I was busy looking into his business affairs, so that idea of the pot of gold wasn’t exactly plucked from thin air. So I’m the one who owes you a bottle. You don’t owe me anything.’
‘A little drink, maybe?’ Bäckström said with a nod, looking even happier now. ‘After a hard day at work full of trials and tribulations.’ Fuck, they’re shrewd, these Russians, he thought. The bitch had just sat there, playing it cool, figuring out how to trick me out of the whole bet. Then she gets sentimental. And the next day her conscience gets the better of her and she decides to put things right.
‘Well, maybe just a little one,’ Nadja said. ‘It’s the best vodka you can get, by the way, better that Stolichnaya, Kubanskaya, or Moskovskaya. It’s called Standard, and you can’t get it in Sweden. My family usually bring a few bottles when they come to visit.’
‘It’ll be interesting to see what it tastes like,’ Bäckström the connoisseur said. He had already taken two glasses and a bag of cough drops out of his desk drawer. ‘There we go, glasses and a little something for after,’ he explained, pointing at the throat sweets.
‘I’ve got a jar of pickled gherkins in the fridge,’ Nadja said, looking dubiously at the bag of mints. ‘I think I’ll go and get that instead.’
Not just gherkins, it turned out. When she returned she had with her a sourdough loaf, smoked sausage, and cured ham.
Probably because of all those world wars they’ve been through, Bäckström thought. A proper Russian always makes sure they’ve got supplies within reach in case it all kicks off.
‘Cheers, Nadja,’ Bäckström said, biting into a large slice of sausage and raising his glass.
‘Nazdrovje,’ Nadja said, smiling with all her gold teeth, and then snapping her neck back and downing the vodka without so much as a blink.
Fuck, Bäckström thought, a quarter of an hour later, after another sturdy Russian drink, a whole gherkin, and half a sausage. These Russian bastards have a lot of heart. If you just make a bit of effort and gain their trust, he thought.
‘What could be better than this, Nadja?’ Bäckström said, pouring them a third glass. ‘All we’re missing is a balalaika and some Cossacks jumping about on top of the desk.’
‘This is good,’ Nadja said. ‘I’m happy to skip the Cossacks, but a balalaika might have been nice.’
‘Tell me about yourself, Nadja,’ Bäckström said. ‘How come you ended up here? In the bosom of Mother Svea, here in the High North.’ A lot of heart, he thought. And he’d never tasted vodka that was anywhere near as good as this. Have to get hold of a crate of this, he thought.
‘Are you sure you want to hear it?’ Nadja said.
‘I’m listening,’ Bäckström said. He leaned back in his chair and smiled his warmest smile.
So Nadja had told him. How Nadjesta Ivanova had left the disintegrating Soviet empire. How she ended up in Sweden and became Nadja Högberg and had spent the past ten years working as a civilian investigator for the crime unit in the Western District.
Not that it had been altogether straightforward. After graduation she had worked as a risk analyst within the nuclear energy industry and had worked at several nuclear power stations in the Baltic region.
The first time she applied for permission to leave her homeland was 1991, two years after the liberation of 1989. At that time she was working at a nuclear power station in Lithuania, not far from the Baltic coast. She never got a reply. One week later she was summoned by her boss, who told her she was being transferred to another nuclear power station some thousand kilometers farther north, just above Murmansk. Some taciturn men had helped her pack her meager belongings. They had driven her to her new workplace and hadn’t left her side for a moment during the two days the journey had taken.