Linda, As in the

Linda Murder
an evert bckstrm novel

Leif GW Persson
Translated from the Swedish by Neil Smith

VINTAGE CRIME / BLACK LIZARD

v i n tage bo o k s
a d iv i s i on of pe n gu i n r an d o m h o us e l lc
n ew yo rk

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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 RU A RY 2 0 1 6

Translation copyright 2013 by Neil Smith

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage 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 Lindasom i Lindamordet by Piratfrlaget,
Stockholm, in 2005. Copyright 2005 by Leif GW Persson. Published by agreement
with the Salomonsson Agency. This translation originally published in Great Britain
by Doubleday, an imprint of 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 authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Persson, Leif G. W.
[Lindasom i Lindamordet. English]
Linda, as in the Linda murder : an Evert Bckstrm novel / Leif GW Persson ;
translated from the Swedish by Neil Smith.
pages cm
1. PoliceSwedenFiction. 2. WomenCrimes againstSwedenFiction.
3. MurderInvestigationSwedenFiction. 4. Vxj (Sweden)Fiction. I. Title.
II. Title: Evert Bckstrm novel.
PT9876.26.E7225L5613 2013839.73'74
dc232013023102
Vintage Books Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-0-307-90765-3
eBook ISBN: 978-0-307-90766-0
Book design by Betty Lew
www.weeklylizard.com
Printed in the United States of America
10987654321

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1.
vxj, friday morning, july 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 hadnt planned to come back from the
country until Sunday evening, and she and her daughter were the only
ones living in the apartment. The earlier the better, as far as the police
were concerned, and especially regarding a murder investigation.
At five minutes past eight in the morning the alarm had reached the
regional communication center of Vxj Police, and a patrol car that
was in the vicinity 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 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 either in the shower or sitting in the staff 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
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Leif GW Persson
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 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 Vxj Police Authority.
In the bedroom of the apartment they had found a dead woman.
Everything indicated that she had been murdered and that thishow
on earth they knew this, he didnt knowhad 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
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 he had pulled out the little reminder list of what he
should do if the worst happened to him at work. A laminated sheet of
A4 with ten things to remember, and the 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 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 were going to
do...
Then he too had done everything that could reasonably have been
expected of him. But no more than that, because you dont 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 Vxj. Acting Police Inspector Gustaf von
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Linda, As in the Linda Murder

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 shape, taken as a whole, they
were the dream response for any terrified citizen calling to say that he
or she had three unknown hooligans out on the porch, trying to break
the front door in.
When they pulled up in front of the building on Pr Lagerkvists
vg 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, had gently put his arm round her and
ushered her into the backseat, and reassured her that everythings 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 escape that 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 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
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Leif GW Persson
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 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, 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, her skin felt merely mute
and stiff under his fingertips.
She looks pretty dead, even if she hasnt 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 wasnt 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 oclock in the morning
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Linda, As in the Linda Murder

by two detective inspectors who happened to be on duty. The interview was recorded and typed up the same 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 sheon pain of punishmentwas not allowed to tell anyone
about the contents of the interview. In itself this wasnt so strange.
It wasnt 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 wasnt the sort of
person whod 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 whod 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
victims 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 Sirkn, an island twenty kilometers south of
Vxj.
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.
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Leif GW Persson
The witness was a dog owner, and, according to what she said during her interview, 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. At seven in the morning she usually took
them on a long walk lasting at least an hour.
Im a morning person, Ive never had any trouble getting up early.
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 oclock
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 friends were rewarded with a dried pigs ear or something
nice to chew on.
At five oclock she would go out again, but not so long this time.
About half an 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 friendsmostly women like me and other dog
people, reallyor 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 dont
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.
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At eleven oclock 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 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 hadnt said hello, but she was quite sure it was the victim she had
seen.
I dont think she saw me; she was probably in a hurry. Otherwise,
Im sure shed 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, 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. Day after day with the temperature setting new records, and the following morning she had gone out with
the dogs very early, at seven oclock.
That was earlier than usual, but considering the absolutely incredible summer... I dont think Im alone in thinking that... I wanted
to avoid the worst of it. And every responsible dog owner knows that
dogs dont cope well with too much exertion when its 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, 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, by which
time it was already unbearably hot even though it wasnt much after
seven oclock, she had decided to turn back and go home. 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.
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Leif GW Persson
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 wasnt any point, 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 neighbors 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 hallit must have been
about half past seven, if Ive got that rightshe had rung her neighbors doorbell several times, but no one had come to the door.
I thought she might have come home late and opened the window. Whatever good that would have done, because its 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 isnt to be
taken lightly. And then theres the risk of burglary. Admittedly, its 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 theyre off their heads on
drugs, it cant 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
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made herself some coffee, it was still raining just as heavily, and she
suddenly decided.
As I said, Im 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 Ive got spare keys to most of the
apartments in the building.
So she had fetched the key that the victims mother had given 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 youd expect when youngsters are left
at home alone, so I didnt really think anything of it. I think I called
out to see if anyone was home, but no one answered, so I went 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 thats 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 didnt really 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 now, he decided to leave
that particular detail to his older colleagues in the forensics division.
The hottest summer in living memory, a neighbor who took the same
walk with her dogs every morning, and who also happened to have
spare keys to the victims apartment, a sudden downpour, an open
window. Circumstances working 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. And consid11

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