Lejf Persson - Linda, As in the Linda Murder

It was a neighbour who found Linda, and, all things considered, that was far better than her mother finding her. It also prevented the police from losing 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 flat. The earlier the better, as far as the police were concerned, especially regarding a murder investigation.

The alarm had reached the regional communication centre of Vxj Police at five minutes past eight in the morning, and a patrol car in the vicinity had responded. Just three minutes later they had reported back. They were at the scene, 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 duty officer himself had taken the call. The two younger men who had picked up the request had already managed to acquire something of a reputation in the local force. Sadly it was not a wholly positive one, and, since the duty officer 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. However, while he was considering this they had reported back once more. After just eight minutes, and on his mobile, so that none of what they had to say would be overheard by anyone listening in. It was now quarter past eight.

Remarkably, for once, regardless of their age, experience and reputation, they had got everything right. They had done all that could have been expected of them, and one of them had even done more. Got himself a little gold star in his service record, in a way that had previously been unheard of in the records of the Vxj Police Authority.

In the bedroom of the flat they had found a dead woman. Everything indicated that she had been murdered, and that this had only happened a few hours before. 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 who spoke to the duty officer 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, most recently on 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 stuff hits the fan at work. He 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. One was Acting Police Inspector Gustaf von 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 four years younger: Police Constable Patrik Adolfsson, known as Adolf for reasons which were sadly not limited to his family name alone.

When they responded to the call, they were a couple of kilometres from the reported address, 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 prime Swedish police officer. 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 in the porch, trying to break the front door in.

When they pulled up in front of the building on Pr Lagerkvists vg where the alleged crime was supposed to have been committed, an agitated middle-aged woman came running out into the road towards 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 back seat, 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 on the premises and intended to make his escape that way, Adolf had quickly checked out the entrance to the property and then gone into the flat. 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 Police Academy up in Stockholm. With his pistol drawn he had looked through the flat, padding along the walls so as not to mess things up unnecessarily for their colleagues in forensics, nor to present the perpetrator with an easy target if he was still around and crazy 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 and 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 covered body before he carefully folded back the sheet to check if she was alive or dead.

With his right index finger he had managed to locate her carotid artery, even though this was actually entirely unnecessary considering the noose around her neck and the look in her eyes. Then he had carefully felt her cheeks and temples. 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 spoken to and fantasized about afterwards. 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 as if he were standing outside 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 every bit as alive as he was.

The witness who had found the victim and called the police was interviewed for the first time at about ten oclock in the morning by two detective inspectors. 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 page of the transcript noted that the witness had been informed that she was being issued with a disclosure ban according to paragraph 10, chapter 23 of the Judicial Procedure Act. There was nothing, however, about her reaction to the fact that she was not, on pain of punishment, 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 recorded, and besides, she had reacted just as most people did when they received the same notification: she certainly wasnt the sort of person whod go about gossiping about that sort of thing.