The princess of Burundi

by Kjell Eriksson

The bus approached the roundabout at high speed, and the resulting sharp deceleration forced a passenger near the door to lose his balance and lunge forward. His shoulder bag swung around, hitting Gunilla in the head, and she turned. She looks the same, but different, he thought when he saw her startled and somewhat annoyed expression.

  He had seen her in this posture countless times, her body half-turned and her head craning around. But at school there had often been something indolent and teasing about her, as if she were inviting the gaze of others, though not Vincent. She had never invited him to do anything, had hardly even registered his presence.

  “You gave me nothing,” Vincent mumbled.

  He felt sick to his stomach.

  Get off so I don’t have to see you anymore, he thought. The Iranian had a bad case of dandruff. The bus careened on. Gunilla had gained weight. Her girlish languor had been replaced by a heavyset fatigue.

  Get off! Vincent Hahn bored his eyes into her head. When the bus passed the building that in his day had been Uno Lantz’s junk store but now housed modern offices, he had an idea. Sick, so fucking sick, he thought. But damned good.

  He laughed out loud. The Iranian turned and smiled.

  “You have dandruff,” Vincent said.

  The Iranian nodded and his smile widened.

  “Dandruff,” Vincent said more loudly. Gunilla and a handful of the other passengers turned around. Vincent lowered his head. He was sweating. He got off at the next stop and remained standing in one place after the bus continued down Kungsgatan. He looked down at his feet. He always got off too early. My poor feet, he thought. My poor feet. Poor me.

  His feet led him down Bangårdsgatan to the river and then down toward Nybro bridge. He stopped there, his arms hanging passively at his sides. Only his eyes moved. Everyone seemed to be in a hurry. Only Vincent Hahn could take his time. He stared down into the black water. It was December 17, 2001. How cold it is, he thought as the sweat on his back started to freeze.

  “The poor Talibans,” he said. “Poor everyone.”

  The foot traffic behind him grew heavier. More and more people were walking over the bridge. He lifted his head and looked toward the Spegeln movie theater. A large collection of people had gathered on the street outside. Was it a protest of some sort or had there been an accident? A woman laughed loudly. He realized that the theater was simply showing a popular movie. Laughter. As people moved across the street it looked like a laughing demonstration.

  The cathedral clock struck six and he checked his wristwatch. Vincent smiled triumphantly at the clock tower, which was fifty-five seconds too fast. The cold and the chilly breeze from the river finally drove him to cross the street and make his way to the central square, Stora Torget.

  “It was so bad I didn’t dare…” he heard someone say, and he turned around to catch the rest. He would have liked to find out what it was. What was it that had been so bad?

  He stopped and stared at the back of the person he thought had uttered those words. Soon it will be even worse, he wanted to shout. Much, much worse.

  Three

  Ola Haver was listening to his wife, an amused smile on his face.

  “Who are you laughing at?”

  “No one,” Haver said defensively.

  Rebecka Haver snorted.

  “Go on, please. I’d like to hear the rest,” he said, and stretched out his hand for the salt shaker.

  She shot him a look as if she were deciding whether or not to go on telling him about the situation at her workplace.

  “He’s a threat to public health,” she said, pointing at the photograph in the county-administration newsletter.

  “Surely that’s taking it a bit far.”

  Rebecka shook her head while she again tapped her finger on the bearded county-politician’s face. I wouldn’t want to be under that finger, Haver thought.

  “This is about everyone in our community, the aged, the weak, the ones who neither dare nor have the ability to speak up for themselves.”

  He had heard this particular line of reasoning before and was starting to get sick of it. He salted his food a second time.

  “Too much salt isn’t good for you,” Rebecka said.

  He looked at her, put down the salt shaker, grasped his spoon, and ate the rest of his overly hard-boiled egg in silence.

  Haver stood up, cleared the table, and put his coffee cup, saucer, and egg cup in the dishwasher, hastily wiped down the kitchen counter, and turned off the light over the stove. After these habitual actions he usually checked the temperature on the outside thermometer but this morning he remained standing in the middle of the kitchen. Something stopped him from moving over to the window, as if he were restrained by an invisible hand. Rebecka looked up briefly but went back to her reading. Then he knew. After checking the thermometer he would bend down and kiss his wife on the top of her head, say something about how much he liked her. The same routine every morning.

  This time he hesitated, or rather it was his body that hesitated, that refused to take those two paces to the window. This discovery confused him.

  Rebecka had stopped reading and was watching him with a kind of professional attentiveness, ingrained after many years of hospital rounds. He made a gesture as if to close the door to the dishwasher, but it was already shut.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine,” he said. “I was just thinking.”

  “Do you have a headache?”

  He made a sweeping motion with his hand as if to brush this aside. During the fall he had suffered recurrent attacks of blinding pain in his forehead. It had been several weeks since the last attack. Had she noticed the reason for his hesitation? He didn’t think so.

  “Our division is getting a new guy today,” he said. “From Gothenburg.”

  “Strip him of his gun,” Rebecka said tartly.

  He didn’t bother to reply; suddenly he was in a hurry. He left the kitchen and disappeared into the next room, which they used as an office.

  “I’m going to be late,” he said, from halfway inside the closet. He threw on a sweat suit, shoes, and a sweater that Rebecka had made for him. He pulled out a bag from the clothing store Kapp Ahl from under some boxes, shut the door to the closet, and quickly walked out through the kitchen.

  “I’m going to be late,” he repeated, and hesitated in the hallway for a few seconds before he opened the front door and stepped out into the chilly December morning. He took a few deep breaths, setting off with his head down.

  December. The time of darkness. For Rebecka—or so it seemed—the darkness was heavier than it had been in years. Haver couldn’t remember her ever having been so low. He had been watching her strained attempts to put on a good face, but under the frail exterior her seasonal depression, or whatever it was, tugged at the thin membrane of control stretched over her pressed features.

  A few snowflakes fluttered down. He met Josefsson from apartment 3, who was out with his poodle. This neighbor, who admired police officers and was always full of effusive praise for members of his profession, smiled and said a few words about the winter that was now upon them. Josefsson’s enthusiastic cheeriness always rubbed him the wrong way. Haver mumbled something about having to work.

  He thought about Rebecka. She should start working again. She needed to have people around, the stress of the ward, regular contact with patients and colleagues. Their small evening talks when she and Haver would tell each other what had happened at work that day had been replaced by a sullen atmosphere and a tense anticipation of what would happen next. They needed something new, an injection of new energy. Since child number two, Sara, their relationship had lost much of its spice.

  Haver now felt as if the routines at work were mirrored by a kind of somnambulism at home. There was a time when he had felt a physical joy at the thought of coming home, a longing for Rebecka, just to be close to her.

  Was she the only one who had changed? Haver had thought about this. Sammy “Rasbo” Nilsson,
a colleague in the Homicide Division, said it was a sign of his age.

  “The two of you have entered into a middle-age crisis, the time when couples realize that life isn’t going to get any better,” he had said, smiling.

  “Bullshit,” Haver had cut him off. Now he wasn’t so sure. He loved Rebecka, had done so from the very first. Did she love him? He had discovered a new, critical expression on her face, as if she were looking at him with new eyes. Sure, he worked a lot more now that Ann Lindell was on maternity leave, but there had been times when he had worked at least as much and back then it had never bothered her.

  The cell phone rang.

  “Hello, it’s me,” said Chief Ottosson. “You can forget about target practice today. We have a body.”

  Haver froze. Josefsson’s poodle barked in the distance. It had probably met up with the female Labrador from apartment 5.

  “Where?”

  “In Libro. A jogger found it.”

  “A jogger?”

  The sun was barely peeking over the horizon. Were there really people up and running this early, in this weather?

  “Forensics is on its way,” said Ottosson.

  He sounded tired and distant, as if he were almost bored, as if a jogger coming across a dead body were a routine occurrence.

  “Homicide?”

  “Most likely,” said Ottosson, but he corrected himself immediately. “Definitely. The body is mutilated.” Haver now heard the note of hopelessness in the chief’s voice.

  It was not tiredness but despair at the human capacity for evil that made the thoroughly nice Ottosson sound so distracted.

  “Where is Libro?”

  “Right where you drive out of town, on the right-hand side after the county storage facility.”

  Haver thought hard as he was unlocking the car door, trying to recall what the rest of Börjegatan looked like.

  “The car-inspection facility?”

  “Farther. It’s where the county dumps its snow.”

  “Okay, I know where that is. Who else?”

  “Fredriksson and Bea.”

  They finished the conversation. He had told Rebecka he would be late and he would be, for sure, but now for a completely different reason from the one he had imagined fifteen minutes ago. The local police-union meeting would be replaced with a strategy session at work or some such business. The union would have to wait, as would his scheduled practice session at the shooting range.

  John Harald Jonsson had bled copiously. The originally light-colored jacket was now deeply stained with blood. Death had probably come as a relief. He was missing three fingers from his right hand, severed at the second joint. Burn marks and blue-black contusions on his neck and face bore witness to his suffering.

  Forensic technician Eskil Ryde was standing a few meters from the body, staring in a northerly direction. Haver thought he looked like Sean Connery with his stern features, stubble, and receding hairline. He was gazing out over the Uppsala plains as if expecting to find answers out there. Actually he was watching a Viggen fighter jet.

  Beatrice and Fredriksson were crouched down. The wind was blowing from the west. A colleague in uniform was putting up police tape. There was an indefinably sweet smell in the air that made Haver turn around.

  Fredriksson looked up and nodded at Haver.

  “Little John,” he said.

  Haver had also recognized the murdered man immediately. A few years ago he had cross-examined him in a case involving his brother, Lennart, who had named John as his alibi witness. A nice guy, as far as Haver could recall, a former small-time thief who had never resorted to violence. Not surprisingly, John had corroborated his brother’s claims. He was lying, of course, Haver had always been convinced of that, but even so he had never been able to disprove Lennart Jonsson’s alibi.

  They had talked about fish, Haver remembered. Little John had a passion for tropical fish and from there it wasn’t too great a step to fishing.

  “What a fucking sight,” Beatrice sighed, getting to her feet with effort.

  Ottosson’s car pulled up by the side of the road. The three police officers watched their chief talk to some of the curious onlookers who had already gathered by highway 272, about fifty meters away. He gestured with his hand to show that they couldn’t park their cars along this stretch of road.

  “Where is the jogger?” Haver asked, looking around.

  “In the emergency room,” Bea said. “When he ran out onto the road to flag down a car he slipped badly. He may have broken his arm.”

  “Has anyone questioned him?”

  “Yes; he lives in Luthagen and runs here every morning.”

  “What was he doing out here in the snow?”

  “He likes to run on the bicycle trail, apparently. But first he does some stretches and moves in from the road. At least that was his explanation.”

  “Did he see anything?”

  “No, nothing.”

  “He’s probably been here all night,” the forensic technician said, indicating the body.

  “Tire tracks?”

  “All over,” Beatrice said.

  “It’s a dump, for Pete’s sake,” Fredriksson said.

  “Got it,” Haver said.

  He took a closer look at Little John. He was severely bruised, the victim of someone who was extremely thorough or enraged, or both. The burn marks—most likely from a cigarette—were deep. Haver bent over and studied Little John’s wrists. Dark red marks bore witness to them having been tightly bound.

  The stumps on his hands where the fingers had been removed were blackened. The cuts were neatly made, probably with a very sharp knife or scissors. Maybe pliers.

  Ottosson came jogging over and Haver went up to meet him.

  “Little John,” he said simply, and the chief nodded.

  He looked unexpectedly alert. Perhaps it was the brisk temperature.

  “I heard he had been mutilated.”

  “What did Little John know that was so important?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think he was tortured,” Haver said, then suddenly he thought of the murdered man’s tropical fish. Piranhas. He shivered.

  Ottosson sniffed. A sudden gust made them look up. Haver’s thoughtful mood from the morning remained. He felt unenterprising and unprofessional.

  “A protracted struggle,” he said.

  Ottosson took out a checkered handkerchief and blew his nose loudly.

  “Damned wind,” he said. “Found anything?”

  “No. He was probably brought here by car.”

  “It’s open,” Ottosson stated, nodding in the direction of the raised barrier. “I come by this way fairly often and I never see anyone turn in here, other than in the winter when the county trucks dump snow here.”

  Haver knew that Ottosson had a cabin near the city and thought he had heard that it was on Gysingevägen somewhere.

  Ottosson suddenly turned around and spotted Fredriksson and the forensic technician, who were talking next to the body. Bea had left the pair and was wandering around nearby.

  “Why did you come out here?” Haver shouted at his back.

  Ottosson didn’t usually turn up so quickly at the scene of a crime.

  “I booked Little John when he was sixteen. It was his first contact with us.”

  “How old did he get?”

  “He was forty-two,” Ottosson said and continued to his car.

  Four

  She was taken by surprise. She had looked back at the sound of something she thought was a scream. Ann Lindell turned around. A woman’s scream.

  When she turned back again he was right in front of her, Santa Claus, with an overabundant beard and a macabre face mask.

  “Good grief, you scared me to half to death.”

  “Merry Christmas,” the Santa said, trying to sound like a Walt Disney character.

  Go to hell, she thought, but smiled.

  “No, thank you,” she said, as if the Santa had been t
rying to sell her something, which had probably been his intention because he left her in order to turn his attention to a couple with three children.

  She walked into the supermarket. He would do more good shoveling the sidewalk, she thought. Then at least you’d be able to get in. She stamped hard to get the snow off her feet and took out her shopping list. It was long and she was already exhausted.

  Candles were first on the list, then an endless number of various food items. She didn’t want to be doing this, but she had no choice. It was the first time her parents were coming to Uppsala for Christmas. Granted, her mother had promised to bring a few Christmas dishes with her, but the list was still daunting.

  She was sweating by the time she reached the vegetable aisle.

  “Do you have any cabbage?” she asked a passing employee, who gestured vaguely.

  “Thank you,” Lindell said pointedly. “Thanks for the detailed directions.”

  A hand appeared on her arm. She turned around and saw Asta Lundin.

  “Ann, it’s certainly been a long time,” she said.

  She kept her hand where it was, and Ann Lindell felt the pressure on her arm. The past flickered in front of her eyes. Asta was the widow of Tomato-Anton, a labor-union buddy who had been friends with Edvard Risberg. Ann had met her a few times through Edvard. They had had coffee in her kitchen and Edvard had later helped her when she moved into town.

  “Asta,” she said simply, unable to think.

  “I see you have a little one,” Asta said, nodding to the carrier on Ann’s back.

  “His name is Erik,” Ann said.

  “Is everything all right?”

  She wanted to cry. Asta’s hair stood like a halo around her thin face. She recalled Edvard’s saying that Tomato-Anton and Asta were some of the best people he had ever met.

  “Yes, everything’s fine,” Ann said, but her expression betrayed her.

  “There’s a lot that has to go in the shopping cart,” Asta said. “What a chore.”

  Ann wanted to ask about Edvard. She hadn’t talked to him in a year and a half, ever since that evening at the Östhammar hospital when she told him she was pregnant with another man’s child. She hadn’t heard anything about him through anyone. It was as if he had been erased from her life. Was he still living on Gräsö island, renting the flat above Viola’s? What was he doing? Was he in touch with his teenage boys? And—this is when she started to lose it—was he seeing anyone new?