GeGurra is a real player, thought Bäckström, who was on his way to a late Thursday lunch at the Opera bar to which his benefactor had invited him. GeGurra always treated and he always treated generously. He was definitely a real player who sprinkled his manna over all the first-rate people in his vicinity. Like Bäckström, for example.
Something of an operator besides, thought Bäckström. With his silver-white hair, his shiny Italian suits. Never made a show of himself. He was simply there like an old-school mafioso. Not someone with a mouth that ran ahead of his brain, creating problems for himself and for others. A player and an operator, he thought.
A little like himself, actually. Most recently last week he had given a whole fifty-kronor bill to an unusually hopeless hag so that she could take a taxi to the subway for further transport to her wretched Tatar thermos in the southern suburbs. So that she would not lie in Bäckström’s Hästens bed and make a mess of his existence. There was also all the advice and good deeds he had portioned out. Completely free of charge and even to complete vegetables like Anna Holt.
A bit like you, Bäckström, thought Bäckström. A player and an operator.
“How’s the pea soup at this joint?” asked Bäckström as soon as he sat down and knocked back a little Thursday dram to prepare the way for his lunch.
“The best in town,” said GeGurra. “Homemade with extra pork and sausage. Real meat sausage and that old-fashioned fat pork, you know. You get it in slices, of course, thick slices. On a separate plate on the side.”
“Then it’ll be pea soup,” Bäckström decided.
“Do you want a warm punch with it?”
“A regular shot and a pilsner is fine,” said Bäckström. Warm punch? Does he think I’m a faggot, or what?
“Personally I’ll have the grilled flounder. And a mineral water,” said GeGurra, nodding in confirmation to the white-clad waiter.
Fish, thought Bäckström. Are we homos, or what?
Nice place, thought Bäckström. It was basically empty as soon as the lunch rush was over and ideal for confidential conversations.
“How’s it going?” asked GeGurra, leaning forward.
“It’s rolling along. At a rapid pace, actually,” he added so that GeGurra wouldn’t get any ideas under his white hair.
“Starting to get the hang of that character Waltin,” Bäckström continued, and then in brief strokes he recounted his finds down in the central archive.
“I almost suspected as much. Sometimes he expressed himself in a peculiar way, to say the least.” GeGurra sighed.
“I get the idea this may have been something sexual,” said Bäckström. Ask the woman with the candlestick, he thought.
“Sexual? Now I don’t understand.”
“Possible motives,” Bäckström clarified, and then he also expanded on this line of reasoning.
“I won’t get mixed up in that part,” said GeGurra, shaking all his white hair almost deprecatingly. “How’s it going with the weapon?”
Won’t get mixed up with it, thought Bäckström. Who the hell does he think he is?
“Fifty million,” said Bäckström, rubbing his index finger against his thumb. “The weapon is ten mill. In itself nothing to scoff at, but now we’re talking fifty. If I find the weapon, then I find the murderer. There are more involved in this business than Waltin,” said Bäckström, letting GeGurra have a taste of his heavy police gaze.
“You think you can find the weapon and you can also solve the murder?”
“You betcha,” said Bäckström. “I have good leads on the weapon, and I’ve already found two of those involved. There are more, if you ask me.”
“I’m assuming that I can be anonymous,” said GeGurra. “I have to be kept out of it, as you understand. This sort of thing is not good for business.”
“Of course,” said Bäckström. And that part about fifty-fifty you can just forget, he thought.
A player and an operator, thought Bäckström as he sat in the taxi on his way back to work. Although not like me, he thought. A little too gay and a little too nervous when push comes to shove.
Thursday pea soup with extra pork and sausage, plenty of mustard, a couple shots and a large pilsner to get the system going. A few pancakes with whipped cream and jam on top and a real marvel for the little craw that was already rumbling like a blast furnace as he sank down behind his desk. Perhaps I ought to open the door so all the little thing finders out in the corridor get a chance to enjoy a really good lunch, thought Bäckström, who felt that a major fart was on its way.
He test fired carefully but it wouldn’t come out until his own little half-boss suddenly knocked and came into his office. Now, you little binder carrier, thought Bäckström. Giving him the evil eye, he sank down in the chair, eased up on his left buttock, and tightened his well-trained diaphragm. A sizeable barrel and not an ordinary lousy six pack like all the gym queers.
A completely formidable and juicy one. One of Bäckström’s best ever. A real orchestra finale. First a couple of noisy blasts with ass bassoon, a several-seconds-long solo on bowel trumpet, then a few concluding toots on anal flute.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” asked Bäckström, flexing lightly with both cheeks. There, you got a little something good to suck on, he thought. The little bastard looked ready to faint, and apparently he wanted to deliver a letter.
“Set it with the rest of the mildew,” said Bäckström, pointing at his overflowing desk. “I’ll get to it when I have time.” Damn what a hurry he was in, he thought.
The letter was from the Stockholm police department’s own female police chief. Just as skinny as that attack dyke Holt. Just as crazy as Holt, and certainly a sister in the same association of fairy and dyke constables.
Bäckström had received a summons to a gender sensitivity course that would start on Monday morning at nine o’clock and last the whole week. Police officials of the highest rank had noticed that Bäckström apparently lacked this mandatory feature in police training and intended to remedy the matter immediately. Accommodations were at some camp up in Roslagen. Not a request, but an order.
Now damn it this is war, thought Bäckström, tensing all his muscles from his navel on down.