Linda, As in the Linda Murder by Leif GW Persson

Li nda, As in the Linda, Linda Murder  an  a n e v e rt b ä c k s t r ö m n ov e l

Leif GW Persson Translated from the Swedish by Neil Smith

VINTAGE CRIME / BLACK LIZARD  v i n t a g e b o o k s  a d i v i s i o n o f p e n g u i n r a n d o m h o u s e l l c new york 

 A V I N TA G E C R I M E / B L A C K L I Z A R D O R I G I N A L , F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6

Translation copyright © 2013 by Neil Smith  All rights reserved. Published Published in the United United States by by Vintage Books, Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Ltd., Toronto. Originally published in Sweden as Linda— Linda—som som i Lindamordet  by  by Piratförlaget, Stockholm, in 2005. Copyright © 2005 by Leif GW Persson. Published by agreement  with the Salomonsson Salomonsson Agency. Agency. This This translation originally published in Great Britain Britain by Doubleday, Doubleday, an imprint of Transworld Transworld Publishers, a division of the Random House Group Limited, London, in 2013. Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Crime/Black Lizard and colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Library of Congress Cataloging-inCataloging-in-Publication Publication Data  Persson, Leif Lei f G. W. W. [Linda—som [Linda— som i Lindamordet. English] Linda, as in the Linda murder : an Evert Bäckström novel / Leif GW Persson Persson ; translated from the Swedish by Neil Smith. pages cm 1. Police—Sweden— Police—Sweden—Fiction. Fiction. 2. Women— omen—Crimes Crimes against—Sweden— against—Sweden—Fiction. Fiction. 3. Murder—Investigation— Murder—Investigation—Sweden— Sweden—Fiction. Fiction. 4. Växjö (Sweden)— (Sweden)—Fiction. Fiction. I. Title. II. Title: Evert Bäckström novel. PT9876.26.E7225L5613 2013 839.73'74— 839.73'74—dc23 dc23 2013023102  Vintage Books Trade Paperback Paperback ISBN: 978-0978- 0-307307-9076590765-3 3 eBook ISBN: 978-0978- 0-307307-90766-0 90766-0 Book design by Betty Lew   www.weeklylizard.com  www .weeklylizard.com Printed in the United States of America  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

1.  väx  vä x jö jö,, f r i da day y mo mor r n i ng ng,, j u ly 4

It was a neighbor who found Linda, and, all things considered, that  was far better than her mother finding her. It also saved the police a great deal of time. Her mother hadn’t planned to come back from the country until Sunday evening, and she and her daughter d aughter were the only ones living in the apartment. The earlier the better, better, as far as the police  were concerned, and especially regarding regarding a murder investigation.  At five minutes past eight in the morning the alarm had reached the regional communication center of Växjö Police, and a patrol car that  was in the vicinity vi cinity had responded. Just three minutes later they had reported back. The first patrol was in place, the woman who had sounded the alarm was safely installed in the rear seat of the patrol car,, and they were about to enter the building car buildi ng to check the situation. The patrol car really ought to have been parked in the garage of the police station at that time, seeing as that was when the night shift was replaced by the day shift and pretty much every police officer who  was on duty was was either in the shower or sitting in the staff room room waiting for morning prayers and the handover meeting. The duty officer himself had taken the call. The two younger colleagues who picked up the request had already managed to acquire something of a reputation in the local force. Sadly, not wholly positive, and, seeing as the duty officer himself was twice their age, had thirty years in the force, and reckoned that he spent far too much time up to his neck in elk shit, his first instinct had been to send reinforcements, whoever that might be at this time of day, but while he was considering this they had reported back once more. After just eight minutes, and also on his cell phone, so that none of what they 3

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had to say would be overheard by anyone listening in. It was now quarter past eight, and the first report from the officers at the crime scene lasted about a minute. But most remarkably: For once, regardless of their age, experience, and reputation, they had done absolutely everything right. They They had done everything that could have been expected of them, and one of them had even done more than that. Got himself a little gold star in his service record, and in a way that had previously been unheard of in the records of the Växjö Police Authority. In the bedroom of the apartment they had found a dead woman. Everything indicated that she had been murdered and that this—how on earth they knew this, he didn’t know—had happened only a few hours before. But there were no signs of the perpetrator, apart from an open bedroom window at the back of the building, which at least gave some indication of how he had left the scene of the crime. Unfortunately,, there was a complication. The young officer whom Unfortunately the duty officer spoke to was convinced that he recognized the victim, and, if she was who he thought she was, it meant that the duty officer had met her on numerous occasions over the summer, and most recently when he left work the previous day. “Not good, not good,” the duty officer muttered, apparently largely to himself. Then Then he had pulled out the little reminder list li st of what he should do if the worst happened to him at work. A laminated sheet of  A4 with ten things to remember, remember, and the thought-provoking thought-provoking heading “If the you-know-what hits the fan at work.” He used to put it under the blotter on his desk at the start star t of each shift, and it was almost four years since the last time he had any reason to take it out. “Okay boys,” the duty officer said. “This is what we’re going to do . . .” Then he too had done everything that could reasonably have been expected of him. But no more than that, because you don’t want that sort of excitement at his age. The patrol car that had arrived at the crime scene first contained two young police officers from Växjö. Acting Police Inspector Gustaf von 4

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Essen, thirty years old and known in the force as the Count because of his name, even though he was always careful to point out that he  was actually just “a perfectly ordinary baron.” The other officer in the car was his four-years-younger colleague, Police Constable Patrik  Adolfsson, known as Adolf for reasons that were sadly not limited to his family name alone.  When they responded to the call, they were a couple kilometers from the alleged crime scene, on their way back to the police station. Because there was practically no traffic at all in the area at that time of the morning, Adolf had done a 180-degree turn, put his foot down and headed back the quickest way without lights or siren, while the Count kept a sharp eye out for any suspicious movement in the opposite direction. Together they made up almost two hundred kilos of police officer, of prime Swedish stock. Mainly muscle and bone, with all their senses and motor functions in the best possible possibl e shape, taken as a whole, they  were the dream response for any terrified citizen calling to say that that he or she had three unknown hooligans out on the porch, trying tr ying to break the front door in.  When they pulled up in front of the building on Pär Lagerkvists väg where the situation was supposed to have arisen, an agitated middle-aged woman came running out onto the road toward them. She was waving her arms and stumbling over her words, and Adolf,  who was first out of the car car,, had gently put his arm round her and ushered her into the backseat, and reassured her that “everything’s “everything’s all right now.” And while the Count had taken up position at the rear of the building, weapon drawn, in case the culprit was still there and intended to make his hi s escape that way, way, Adolf had quickly checked out the entrance to the property and then gone into the apartment. Easy enough, seeing as the front door was wide wi de open. This was the point where he won his gold star, before doing, for the very first time, all the other things that he had been taught to do at the Police Academy up in Stockholm. With his pistol drawn, he had looked through the rooms. Padding along the walls so as not to mess things up unnecessarily for their colleagues in forensics, or to present the perpetrator with an easy target if he was still there and was crazy 5

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enough to have a go. But the only person there was the victim. She  was lying on the bed in the bedroom, motionless, beneath a bloodstained sheet that covered her head, torso, and half her thighs.  Adolf called to the Count through the open bedroom window that the coast was clear for him to check the stairwell, then holstered his pistol and pulled out the little digital digi tal camera he had under his left armpit. Then he quickly took three different pictures of the motionless covered body before he carefully folded back the part of the sheet covering her head to check if she was alive or already dead.  With his right index finger he had managed to locate her carotid artery,, even though this was actually entirely unnecessary, artery unnecessary, considering the necktie around her neck and the look in her eyes. Then he had carefully felt her cheeks and temples, but, in contrast to the living  women he had touched in the same way way,, her skin felt merely mute and stiff under his fingertips. She looks pretty dead, even if she hasn’t been dead for long, he thought. But he had also recognized her. Not as someone he had merely seen before, but as someone he was actually acquainted with, had even spoken to and fantasized about afterward. Strangest of all . . . although he had no intention of ever telling anyone about this. He had never felt so present as he did just then. Completely present, yet at the same time it was as if he were standing outside of what was happening and watching himself. As if this really wasn’t anything to do with him, still less with the woman lying dead in her bed, even though just a few hours before she must have been just as alive as he was.

2. The witness who had found the victim and called the police was interviewed for the first time at about ten o’clock in the morning 6

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by two detective inspectors who happened to be on duty. The interview was recorded and typed up the same day. day. Approximately twenty pages of print: Margareta Eriksson, fifty-five years old, widow, no children, lived on the top floor of the building where the victim and her mother lived. The final point of the interview noted that the witness had been informed that she was being issued with a disclosure ban according to paragraph ten, chapter twenty-three of the Judicial Procedure Act. There was nothing, however, about her reaction to the fact that she—“on pain of punishment”—was not allowed to tell anyone about the contents of the interview. In itself this wasn’t so strange. It wasn’t the sort of thing that was usually noted in an interview, and besides, she had reacted just like most other people when they received the same notification: that she certainly wasn’t the sort of person who’d who’d go about gossiping about that sort of thing. The building, consisting of a basement, four floors, and an attic, was owned by a housing association of which the witness was also the chairperson. Two apartments on each of the lower three floors, and one double-size one at the top, where the witness lived. In total, seven properties, all owned by people in middle age or older, single people and couples with grown-up children who who’’d moved out. The majority of them were away on vacation at the time of the crime. The apartment in which the murder took place was owned by the victim’s mother, and according to the witness the victim sometimes lived there too. Recently the witness had seen her fairly often, but the mother herself was on vacation, spending most of her time at her place in the country on Sirkön, an island twenty kilometers south of Växjö. The apartment, four rooms and a kitchen, was on the ground floor when seen from the street and the entrance to the building, but because the building was built on a slope the apartment was actually one floor up at the back looking onto the yard, which itself led into a small area of woodland surrounded by detached houses and a few blocks of apartment buildings. 7

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The witness was a dog owner, and, according to what she said during her interview inter view,, dogs had been her main interest for many years. In recent times she had had two, a Labrador and a spaniel, which she  walked four times a day day.. At seven in the morning she usually took them on a long walk lasting at least an hour. “I’m “I’ m a morning mornin g person, I’ve never had any trouble troub le getting up early ear ly.. I hate lying around in the morning.”  When they got home she usually had breakfast and read the morning paper while the dogs got their “morning feed.” At twelve o’clock it was time again. Another walk with the dogs, again lasting about an hour, and when she returned she usually ate lunch while her two four-legged four-leg ged friends friend s were rewarded with “a “a dried pig’s pig’s ear or something nice to chew on.”  At five o’clock she would go out again, but not so long this time.  About half an hour hour,, so she would have time to eat dinner and “give Peppe and Pigge their evening feed” in peace and quiet before it was time to switch on the evening news on television. That left “the evening pee” sometime between ten and twelve, depending on what the television had to offer.  A fixed routine that largely seemed to be dictated by her dogs. She usually spent the free hours in between either running various errands in town, meeting friends—“mostly women like me and other dog people, really”—or really”—or working from home in her apartment. Her husband, who had died ten years ago, had been an accountant  with his own business, and she had worked for him part-time. After he died she had carried on helping some of their old customers with their accounts. But her main source of income was the pension left by her husband. “Ragnar was always careful with things like that, so I really don’t have anything to worry about.” The interview had been conducted in her home. The officers who interviewed her could see with their own eyes that there was no reason to disbelieve her on that last point. Everything they could see indicated that Ragnar had been careful to provide for his wife after his death. 8

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 At eleven o’clock the previous evening, while she was busy with the so-called “evening pee,” she had seen the victim emerge from the front door and set off in i n the direction of the town center. “It looked like she was going to a party, although I tend to think that most youngsters look like that now, no matter what time of day it is.” She herself was standing some thirty meters away up the road, and they hadn’ hadn’t said hello, but she was quite sure it was the victim she had seen. “I don’ don’t think she saw me; me ; she was probably probabl y in a hurry. Other Otherwise, wise, I’m I’ m sure she’ she’d d have said hello.” Five minutes later she was up in her own apartment, and, following her usual routine, she had gone to bed and fallen asleep more or less at once, and that was pretty much all she could remember from the preceding evening. This incredible summer had begun as early as May, May, and never seemed to want to come to an end. Day after day without the slightest puff of wind, the sun hot as a barbecue, the sky bleached blue, merciless,  with no clouds, no shadow shadow.. Day after day with the temperature setting new records, and the following morning she had gone out with the dogs very early, at seven o’clock. That was earlier than usual, but considering the “absolutely “absolutely incredible summer . . . I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that . . . I wanted to avoid the worst of it.” And every ever y responsible dog owner knows that dogs don’t cope well with too much exertion when it’s hot. She had followed the same route she always took. Turned left and  walked up the road when she came out of the front door door,, past the neighboring properties, then the path off to the right down toward the larger patch of woodland that spread out just a few hundred meters behind the building she lived in. Half an hour later, later, by which time it was already unbearably hot even though it wasn’t much after seven o’clock, o’clock, she had decided to turn back and go home. Peppe Peppe and Pigge were both panting heavily, and even their owner was longing for the shade at home in the apartment, and something cool to drink. 9

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More or less at the same time she decided to turn back and go home, the sky had suddenly clouded over and turned black, a wind  was whipping at the bushes and trees, and she could hear thunder not far off. When the first few heavy drops started to fall she was just a couple hundred meters from home, and she had started to jog even though there really wasn wasn’’t any point, poi nt, seeing as the shower had already turned into a downpour and she was soaked through by the time she got back to the block she lived in through the yard at the back. That was also when she noticed that her neighbor’ neighbor’ss bedroom window was open and blowing in the wind, and that the curtains inside the room were already soaked.  As soon as she got into the entrance hall—“it must have been about half past seven, if I’ve I’ve got that right”—she had rung her neighnei ghbor’ss doorbell several times, but no one had come to the door. bor’ “I thought she might have come home late and opened the window. Whatever good that would have done, because it’s far warmer outside than it is indoors. When we were out for the evening pee it  was shut, at any rate, because I usually notice things like that.” Because no one had come to the door, she had taken the elevator up to her floor. She had dried the worst of the rain off the dogs and changed into dry clothes. She had also been in a bad mood. “This is actually a shared property, and water damage isn’t to be taken lightly. And then there’s the risk of burglary. Admittedly, it’s a few meters up to the windowsill, but it seems to me that hardly a day goes by without there being something in the paper about burglars stealing everything people have, and even if they’re off their heads on drugs, it can’t be that difficult to borrow a ladder from one of their friends, can it?” But what should she do? Talk to the daughter next time she bumped into her? Call her mother and tattle? A fortnight ago there had been a similar cloudburst, but that one had lasted only ten minutes before it stopped as abruptly as it had started, and the sun started shining in a blue, cloudless sky once more, and it had actually been good for the lawns and other plants. But not this time, and after a quarter of an hour, while she sorted out the dogs’ food bowls and 10

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made herself some coffee, it was still raining just as heavily, and she suddenly decided. “As I said, I’m chair of the residents’ association, and we usually look out for each other here. Especially during the summer when so many people are on vacation. So I’ve got spare keys to most of the apartments in the building.” So she had fetched the key that the victim victim’’s mother had given her her,, taken the elevator down to the ground floor, rang the doorbell a few more times, “just in case she was home after all,” then unlocked the door and went into the apartment. “I suppose it looked the way you you’’d expect when youngsters are left l eft at home alone, so I didn’t really think anything of it. I think I called out to see if anyone was home, but no one answered, so I went in in . . . into the bedroom . . . yes . . . and then I saw what had happened. I realized straightaway. So I . . . I turned and ran right out into the road . . . I was terrified, thinking that he might still have been there. Fortunately, I had my phone with me, so that’s when I called . . . called the emergency number . . . you know, one one two. And they actually answered at once, even though you read in the paper that there are never any police.” She never did get round to closing the open bedroom window,  which didn didn’’t really matter matter,, seeing as it had stopped raining by the time the first patrol car arrived on the scene, and any eventual water damage was by now completely irrelevant. Police Constable Adolfsson naturally had no intention of closing it. He had actually noticed that there were extensive traces of diluted blood on the windowsill outside, but, seeing as it had stopped raining raini ng now, now, he decided to leave that particular detail to his older colleagues in the forensics division. The hottest summer in living memory memory,, a neighbor who took the same  walk with her dogs every morning, and who also happened to have spare keys to the victim’s apartment, a sudden downpour, an open  window.. Circumstances working together  window together,, the hand of fate, if you like, but whatever the reason, this was why the police were able to  work out that things happened one way and not another another.. And consid11