Two years later she didn’t bother asking for permission. With the help of some ‘contacts’ she had got across the border into Finland. She had been met by new contacts, and the next morning she woke up in a house in the country somewhere in Sweden.
‘That was the autumn of 1993,’ Nadja said with a wry smile. ‘I spent six weeks there, talking to my new hosts — I’ve never been so well looked after in my life — and one year later, as soon as I had learned Swedish, I became a Swedish citizen and got my own flat and a job.’
Military intelligence. Good lads, not like those idiots in the Security Police, Bäckström thought, feeling his heart swell with patriotic pride.
‘What job did you get?’ Bäckström said.
‘I forget,’ Nadja said with a wry smile. ‘Then I got a different one, as an interpreter for the Stockholm Police. That was in 1995, I remember that.’
The Security Police, Bäckström thought. Mean bastards who never worked out that Russians are mostly all heart if you know how to deal with them in the right way.
‘What about Högberg?’ Bäckström asked, curious.
‘That’s a whole different story,’ Nadja said with a smile. ‘We met on the Internet, then I divorced him. He was a bit too Russian for my liking, if you get what I mean,’ she said, raising her glass.
‘Well, cheers, then,’ Nadja said with another smile.
‘Nazdrovje,’ Bäckström said. Nothing but heart, he thought.
32.
Detective Inspector Lars Alm and Sergeant Jan O. Stigson had spent most of the day interviewing a couple of Danielsson’s old friends, Halvar ‘Halfy’ Söderman and Mario ‘Godfather’ Grimaldi. Alm had been hoping that Annika Carlsson would go with him, considering what Söderman had got up to with that restaurant owner, but evidently other more important matters had come up and he had to make do with Stigson.
They had started with Halvar Söderman, who lived on Vintergatan down in Gamla Solna, behind the football stadium and just a few hundred meters from the scene of the crime. They had called him first on his phone. No answer. Then they had gone to his flat and knocked on the door. After a series of unanswered knocks, Söderman had suddenly thrown open the door in the evident hope of hitting Stigson in the head with it. Alm had seen this before and recognized the danger in advance. As soon as he saw someone behind the peephole in the door he had pushed Stigson aside, grabbed the edge of the door, and given it an extra-hard tug. Söderman had landed on his backside in his own stairwell, and he wasn’t happy.
‘Whoops,’ Alm said. ‘That could have been really nasty.’
‘What the fuck do you want, fucking idiots?’ Söderman yelled.
‘Police,’ Alm said. ‘We’d like to talk to you. We can do it here or we can take you down to the station. We can even lock you up first if you keep messing with us.’
Söderman wasn’t that stupid. He made do with glaring at them, and two minutes later they were sitting around the table in his little dining room.
‘I recognize you, don’t I?’ he said, staring at Alm. ‘Don’t you work in violent crime in Stockholm?’
‘Used to,’ Alm said. ‘Now I work here in Solna.’
‘Ah, you must be an old friend of Roly’s,’ Söderman concluded. ‘Can’t you have a word with those idiots that have him locked up?’
‘He was released an hour ago,’ Alm said, without going into the details.
‘Is that so? Really, is that so?’ he said with a grin. ‘Can I offer you anything?’
‘Thank you, no,’ Alm said. ‘We won’t be long.’
‘But you could manage a quick cup of coffee? I’m going to have a java. The coffee machine’s loaded and ready to go.’
‘Coffee would be good,’ Alm said.
‘What about you?’ Söderman said, nodding in Stigson’s direction. ‘I suppose you’d like a banana?’
‘Coffee would be good,’ Stigson said.
‘How long is it since you switched?’ Söderman said, looking at Alm.
‘Switched?’ Alm said. ‘How do you mean?’
‘From Alsatians to chimpanzees,’ Söderman said with a grin.
‘It was a while back,’ Alm said.
Söderman had got out his best china. Sugar, milk, cream, even schnapps in case anyone was in the mood. He always had some in the house. But sadly there was no cognac left. But he did have a splash of banana liqueur in the cupboard.
‘In case I have women round,’ he explained, nodding in Alm’s direction. ‘But it’s fine if the monkey wants some,’ he went on, nodding in Stigson’s direction. ‘If it’s okay with his master, it’s okay with me.’
‘Black’s good for me, thanks,’ Alm said. ‘The monkey will take his black too.’
‘Yes, there’s a lot of black these days,’ Söderman sighed. ‘The other day I amused myself by counting them as I headed down to the Solna center to get some shopping. Do you know how many I saw? On a little walk of four hundred meters?’
‘Twenty-seven,’ Alm said.
‘No.’ Söderman sighed, pouring the coffee. ‘I gave up counting when I got to a hundred. Do you know how old I was before I saw my first proper Negro?’ he went on.
‘No,’ Alm said.
‘I was born in thirty-six,’ Söderman said. ‘I must have been seventeen before I saw my first Negro. That was in 1953, down in the old Solna center, outside Lorry. The bar, you know the one. They’d only just opened earlier that year. It was like a street party. Everyone wanted to go up to him and slap him on the back and talk English — fucking weird English, mind — and ask him if he knew Louis Armstrong. I had a bird with me, name of Sivan. Sivan Frisk, and she wasn’t backward in coming forward, if you know what I mean. Fuck, she was wet, right down to her feet before I managed to drag her away from there.’
‘Another age,’ Alm said neutrally.
‘That’s the difference, though, isn’t it?’ Söderman said with a sigh. ‘One is fine, two, even. Especially if you’ve grown up in a place like this. An old working-class district. All the old Solna boys of my generation. But three is too much. One is fine, two is fine, but three is too much.’
‘A completely different thing,’ Alm said.
‘You want to know what I was doing on Wednesday evening last week?’ Söderman interrupted. ‘The same evening some fucking madman beat Kalle to death?’
‘Yes,’ Alm said. ‘What were you doing then?’
‘I’ve already told your lot,’ Söderman said. ‘Some fucking simpleton from the cop shop phoned me up, going on and on about it. Yesterday, the day before? Don’t remember.’
‘What did you tell them?’ Alm asked, without letting on that he was the one who had called.
‘I tried to explain that I had an alibi, but he didn’t want to hear it. So I hung up. I told him to go to hell too.’
‘So tell me, then,’ Alm said. ‘Give me the names of people who can support your alibi.’
‘Sure, I could do that,’ Söderman said. ‘But I’m not going to.’
‘Why not?’
‘Two weeks ago I was supposed to be flying up to Sundsvall to visit an old friend who’s in a bad way. He’s got prostate cancer, and doesn’t look too hot. So when I’m standing there, at the gate to the plane, about to get on, the girl at the desk starts going on about wanting to see my ID. And bear in mind, I was sober and smart, so it was nothing like that.