‘A Swedish police officer who has been attacked and runs the risk of suffering serious violence — in other words, when he is in a so-called extreme situation — is expected to aim at his attacker’s legs. Below the knee, since even a shot to the thigh has a high risk of being fatal,’ she explained.
‘Correct me if I’m wrong,’ Bäckström said. ‘If some crazy bastard is running at you with a knife and intends to stab you, you try to shoot him in the knee?’
‘Below the knee,’ the instructor corrected him. ‘The answer is yes, because that’s what firearms regulations say.’
‘Speaking personally, I’d ask him if he’d like a kiss and a cuddle,’ Bäckström said with a grin. Then he had merely shaken his head and walked away. As soon as he was in the taxi he called a cousin of his who worked at the Police Officers’ Association.
‘So your employer is still refusing to give you the right to embrace little Siggy?’ his cousin said, suddenly sounding as bloodthirsty as Bäckström felt.
‘Exactly,’ Bäckström said. ‘And what the fuck are you going to do about it?’
Everything necessary, according to his cousin. Including talking to an old and reliable associate who had once been an ombudsman in the association, and who was now working as a shooting instructor out at the Police Academy, and who had the authority to sign all the certificates that might be required.
‘I’ll talk to him, and get him to call you and arrange a time,’ his cousin said.
‘Is there anything else I need to think about?’ Bäckström asked.
‘Take a bottle with you,’ his cousin replied.
To save time Bäckström had handed over a bottle of his finest malt whiskey when he first arrived at the firing range at the Police Academy.
‘Thank you very much indeed,’ the reliable associate said, licking his lips. ‘Well, it’s time to embrace little Siggy,’ he said, handing over his own Sig Sauer to Bäckström.
‘Do you feel it?’ he went on, nodding as Bäckström felt the weapon in his hand.
‘Feel what?’ Bäckström said.
‘The only time you get a real hard-on is when you hold little Siggy,’ the instructor said, looking as happy as he had when Bäckström handed over his gift.
Probably mad, Bäckström thought, checking that he wasn’t standing behind him with another gun that he’d had hidden somewhere.
Then he had taken careful aim, closing his left eye just to be sure, squinting with the right, and fired the usual well-aimed shot, which hit where it usually did.
‘Bloody hell,’ his instructor said, finding it hard to conceal his admiration. ‘That would make him shut up.’
Before Bäckström left him, a signed certificate in his pocket, his new friend had given him a few words of advice.
‘One thing that’s struck me, Bäckström...’
‘Yes?’
‘Even though you’re aiming low, you end up hitting just a bit high, if I can put it like that.’
‘Okay,’ Bäckström said.
‘Maybe you should try aiming at the ground just in front of the target?’ the instructor suggested. ‘Considering all those old women who work in the disciplinary department, I mean.’
Forget it, limp dick, Bäckström thought. Now a full citizen and police officer. If anyone so much as raised a hand against me, I would blow their head off, he thought.
65.
Bäckström had left his beloved local bar before midnight. His blond tornado from Jyväskylä had been prevented from accompanying him, since her more routine companion had suddenly shown up in her place of work. He had also glowered at Bäckström. So Bäckström had lumbered home, opened the door to his cozy abode, yawned indulgently, and stepped right in.
I’ll just have to make do with squeezing little Siggy, Bäckström thought, at the very moment when he realized he had unexpected company.
‘Welcome home, Superintendent,’ Farshad Ibrahim said, smiling amiably at his host.
His gigantic cousin didn’t say anything. Just glared at Bäckström with his black, deep-set eyes. A face that could have been carved in stone, were it not for the slow grinding of his jaw.
‘And what can I do for you gentlemen?’ Bäckström said. What the hell do I do now? he thought.
‘Perhaps I could offer you a little drink?’ he suggested, nodding toward the kitchen.
‘Neither of us drinks,’ Farshad Ibrahim said, shaking his head. He was leaning back comfortably in Bäckström’s favorite armchair, while his cousin was standing in the middle of the room, glaring.
‘Don’t worry, Superintendent,’ he went on. ‘We’ve come in peace, and we have a little business proposal.’
‘I’m listening,’ Bäckström said, as he shook his yellow linen trousers as discreetly as possible, even though they suddenly felt drenched with sweat and his legs started trembling of their own accord in a mysterious way.
‘We’re interested in what your colleagues are up to,’ Farshad said, ‘and as I see it, there are two possibilities,’ he continued, sounding like he was thinking out loud.
Then he had put his hand in his pocket, pulled out a bundle of thousand-kronor notes, and put them on Bäckström’s coffee table. A bundle that bore a striking resemblance to all the others Bäckström had himself found in a perfectly ordinary pot of gold. Then for some reason he had pulled out a stiletto knife from his inside pocket, unfolded the double-edged blade, and started to pick at his nails.
It’ll have to be a Bäckström double, Bäckström decided. And because there wasn’t much choice, he gave it his all from the outset.
‘Spare me, spare me!’ Bäckström exclaimed, his big round face twisting and his clasped hands rising in supplication. Then he had slumped to one knee in front of the gigantic Talib, as if he were thinking of proposing to him.
Talib’s jaw stopped grinding and he took a step back, looking down sympathetically at the pleading Bäckström who was on one knee at his feet. Then he had shrugged, turned his head, and looked at his boss. Evidently embarrassed, or so it seemed.
‘Act like a man, Bäckström, not a woman,’ Farshad said in a tone of warning, shaking his head and pointing the knife at him.
And at that moment Bäckström struck.
66.
More or less at the same time as Bäckström had sat himself down in his beloved local bar on Kungsholmen in Stockholm, the police in Copenhagen received a tip-off. An anonymous male individual, a native Dane — middle-aged, to judge by his voice — had called the emergency number and left a message.
At the end of the large carpark on Fasansvejen, a couple of hundred meters from the old SAS hotel and just five minutes from the center of the city, stood a trash can. In the trash can there was now a body wrapped in an ordinary hessian sack that had once contained pig feed. The man in the sack hadn’t crawled in there of his own accord, and, to help even the Danish police to find him, the people who had put him in there had left his naked feet sticking out.
‘Well, I think that was everything,’ the man who had called said before ending the call, made from a pay-as-you-go cell phone, impossible to trace and the obligatory accessory for a certain type of call.
Three minutes later the first patrol car had arrived at the scene, and a half hour later the two uniformed officers had the company of a number of their colleagues from the crime and forensics units of the Copenhagen Police.
More or less at the same time as Bäckström ordered a little chaser to go with his double espresso, they reached the point where they could open the trash can and take a closer look at the naked body inside it. A perfectly ordinary address label had been tied round its neck with string: ‘Nasir Ibrahim, please forward to Stockholm Police.’ Someone had stuffed a parking ticket down the corpse’s throat, and to judge by the wounds on the body, his death had been both drawn out and painful.