Nine
Modig took the call at seven thirty five A.M. He was working the night shift and was still on duty. His colleague Tunander had had a car accident on his way to work and wouldn’t be in until eight.
Not that it troubled Modig unduly. No one was waiting for him at home and he was still feeling unusually alert. His vacation was due to start soon. He had taken off more days than usual and booked a trip to Mexico departing on December 23. When the call came he was wondering what the food would be like. His experiences with so-called Mexican food in Sweden had not filled him with great expectations.
“Someone has strangled Ansgar!” a woman said, clearly distraught.
Modig had little patience with people who panted or even breathed audibly on the phone.
“Please calm yourself,” he said.
“But he’s dead!”
“Who’s dead?”
“Ansgar! I already told you.”
“What’s your name?”
“Gunilla Karlsson.”
She wasn’t breathing as heavily now.
“Where do you live?”
The woman managed to tell him her address with some difficulty, and Modig wrote it down in his usual scrawl.
“Tell me exactly what happened.”
“I walked out onto the patio and there he was, hanging on the fence.”
“Ansgar?”
“Yes. I saw at once that he was dead. And he’s not even mine. How am I ever going to explain this? Malin is going to be devastated.”
“Who is Ansgar?”
“My neighbor’s rabbit.”
Modig couldn’t help smiling. He made a sign to Tunander, who had just walked in, and wrote “dead rabbit” on the pad of paper so that he could read it.
“And you found him on your patio?”
“I was looking after him. They’re away on a trip and I was going to look after Ansgar while they were gone. I was supposed to give him food and water every morning.”
“Did someone string him up or did he get caught on the fence?”
“He has a rope around his neck. He was murdered.”
Does killing a rabbit qualify as murder? Modig wondered as he wrote “murdered” on the pad of paper.
“When did you see him last?”
Tunander left the room chuckling.
“Last night as I was checking on him. Oh, dear God,” she said, and Modig knew she was thinking of her neighbor, Malin.
“Do you have any idea who would be likely to strangle a rabbit?” Modig asked and was suddenly hit by a wave of fatigue.
The woman started to tell him about the care of the rabbit in great detail. Modig stared into space. He heard voices of other officers coming from the area of the building called the Sea.
“We’ll see what we can do,” Modig said kindly.
“Will someone come out? I have to go in to work. Should I let Ansgar hang there?”
Modig thought for a moment.
“Let him stay where he is,” he said finally.
Tunander came back with a cup of coffee.
“How can you name a rabbit Ansgar?” Modig asked when he hung up.
“What kind was it?” Tunander asked.
“What kind?”
“There are all kinds of different breeds. Didn’t you know that?”
He sat down.
“How did it go?”
“Just some dents,” Tunander said and was immediately serious. “Some bitch drove right into me.”
He shook his head. Modig got up.
“Anything to report?” Tunander asked.
“It’s been quiet. A few calls about Little John.”
“Anything of substance?”
“Maybe. I don’t know,” Modig said absently.
He felt exhausted. Mexico was definitely the right decision.
“He was white,” he said.
“Who?”
“Ansgar,” Modig said and heaved himself out of his chair.
Modig left the building, not to return for another fourteen days, just as a meeting concerning the case of John Jonsson was called to order in the large conference room. The assembled group consisted of the usual people from the Violent Crimes Division, Morenius from the Crime Information Service, forensic specialist Ryde, Julle and Aronsson from the Patrol Division, and Rask, who headed the public relations team. A total of twenty or so individuals in all.
Ottosson presided over the meeting. He was getting better at it. Haver glanced at him. He was sitting on Ottosson’s left side, where Lindell normally sat. It was as if Ottosson sensed what he was thinking about, because at that precise moment he put his hand on Haver’s arm, looked at him, and smiled, just like he always did with Ann Lindell.
The touch lasted only a fraction of a second, but the smile was warm and the nod Ottosson gave him filled Haver with joy. He looked around to see if anyone had registered this gesture of collegiality or even friendship. Berglund, who sat across from Haver, smiled slightly.
Haver was surprisingly tense. He was usually dispirited by the sight of so many people gathered around the table, which could only mean that some atrocious act of violence had been committed. Not that he was sick of his work, but he—like his colleagues—realized that a murder investigation drained resources from the other cases. Some people would go free as a result of the fact that they were all sitting there. That was just the way it was. Violence begets violence, as the saying goes, he thought, and that was literally true in this context. Maybe it would be a case of wife-beating or a downtown brawl that would suffer and only encourage the perpetrators to continue.
The chief talked about sending “the right signals.” A murder investigation signaled an escalation of crime. Haver had always known this, but the insight struck him with new force this morning, perhaps because Sammy Nilsson had been complaining as they were walking into the conference room. He was taking part in a new project involving street crime, started after a number of “incidents”—as the chief put it—three assault cases involving youth gangs, the last on the evening of the Santa Lucia celebration.
Now Sammy was forced to leave this work in order to assist in the Little John case. Haver had seen the dejection in his colleague’s face and he understood it completely. Sammy was their youth man, more so than anyone else on the squad. Assisted by colleagues from Drug Enforcement, he had made large inroads in dissolving the gangs, talking sense into the young men who descended upon the town and outlying suburbs like a pack of wild animals. Those were Sammy’s own words.
“They’re like a pack of animals driven from their hunting grounds,” he had said, without specifying exactly where these hunting grounds were located, or who it was who was driving them. Haver had the impression that it was the gangs who were driving other, more peaceful citizens from the streets.
Ottosson asked for silence and almost immediately everyone around the table stopped talking. The chief paused for a few seconds while the whole room sank into stillness. It was as if he wanted to hold a moment of silence for Little John. Everyone was aware of the fact that Ottosson had known the deceased over the course of his entire adult life. Perhaps that was why everyone, as if in wordless agreement, stopped their chatter and their rustling of papers. A few looked at Ottosson, others stared down at the table.
“Little John is dead,” Ottosson began. “There are probably those of us who don’t think that’s much of a loss.”
He paused again, and Haver, who again cast a quick glance at his boss, sensed his doubt as to how he should continue—or was he wondering how his words were going to affect the assembled officers? Ottosson was always concerned about maintaining an upbeat atmosphere, and Haver expected that he would be very careful not to say anything that might have a negative impact.
“That would be a pity, however,” Ottosson said in a forceful voice. “Little John was once a young kid who took a wrong turn, a hell of a wrong turn. Many of you know his big brother, Lennart, and there you have part of the reason why. I hav
e the advantage of having met their parents, Albin and Aina. Fine, decent people.”
How is he going to pull this off? Haver thought, feeling an almost physical discomfort. Fine people was a phrase Ottosson sometimes used, a note of approval that implied more than adherence to a lawful lifestyle.
Haver looked at Bea, who had spoken to John’s mother to test her reaction, but she sat with her head lowered.
“I know they tried to steer their boys right, but it may have been beyond their power. We know very little of what determines a person’s course of action,” Ottosson said thoughtfully.
Bea lifted her head at this outburst of philosophical speculation. Ottosson looked around with slight embarrassment, as if he had committed an indiscretion, and to Haver’s relief he abandoned the subject.
“Ola,” he said in a different and more familiar tone of voice. “Please run through an account of the events to date.”
Haver started by giving them greetings from Ann Lindell, which he immediately realized was a mistake. He tried to repair this error by quickly establishing the perimeters of the murder case. He hastily sketched out the contours of the case, which he said he hoped his colleagues would flesh out with the results of the forensic investigation, the distilled results of any questioning that had taken place. Other issues they needed to address were: Had the initial investigation of the crime site yielded anything? Had there been any results from going door to door? What were the results of the autopsy? Had the initial investigation of the crime site yielded anything?
Haver proceeded through the points on his list in a systematic fashion. No one interrupted him, and when he finished there was an unusual silence in the room.
Did I forget something? Haver wondered and quickly consulted his notepad.
“Excellent,” Ottosson said and smiled.
“Over to you, Ryde.”
The forensic specialist spoke in his usual morning drawl. The snow dump in Libro had yielded a number of interesting objects, although of course many of these had nothing to do with the murder: empty cigarette packs, toys, car tires, orange traffic cones, the sidewalk advertisement from a local café, two plastic balls, a dead kitten, three ice scrapers, and so on. The most remarkable object recovered so far was a stuffed bird, a herring gull, according to Hugosson, a technician who was also an avid bird-watcher.
Two of the objects seemed significant: a length of green nylon rope, about eight millimeters in diameter, and a bloodstained work glove. Results of the blood analysis were not in yet. It could turn out to belong to John, but it could also have come from any one of the many trucks that frequented the dump. Ryde speculated that a driver could have injured himself, stained the glove with blood, and then tossed it or dropped it accidentally. It was a lined winter glove of the label Windsor Elite.
However, the length of rope, barely fifty centimeters, could be directly connected with John. The pattern of the rope fit the marks left on his wrists, and furthermore—and this clinched it—some of John’s hairs had become entangled in the rope’s fibers. The rope, which could have been bought at any gas station or corner store, had been recovered three meters from the body.
They had found a number of tire tracks. Most of these belonged to heavy vehicles with wide tires. Trucks, according to Ryde’s personal opinion. Also tracks from another piece of machinery, probably the Cat that the county had brought in to clear the snow.
But one set of tracks was of greater interest. These belonged to a car and had been found close to John’s body. The prints had been somewhat unclear since the ceaseless snow had partially covered them, but because of the relatively sudden swing from mild to cold weather during the night of the murder, one part of the tracks had frozen and the technicians had been able to reconstruct the pattern and the width.
Ryde spread out a series of photocopies on the table.
“Two hundred twenty millimeters wide, a radial tire, with studs, probably from a van or jeep. This is no rusty Ascona,” he added drily.
“Could the car belong to a county official?” Fredriksson asked, touching one of the black photocopies as if he could feel the pattern with his fingers.
“Sure,” Ryde said. “I’m only giving you what we have. You draw the conclusions.”
“Excellent,” Ottosson repeated.
The meeting continued with Riis giving the results of his investigation into the Jonsson family finances. Much of this was preliminary, as all of the data was not yet in, but for Riis the picture was clear: A low-income family who could not afford much in the way of excesses.
John’s unemployment had hit them hard. There had been more purchases made with monthly payment arrangements and there had been three incidents of failure to make loan repayments during the past two years.
They did not currently receive any housing assistance. The mortgage payment on their condo was reasonable, in Riis’s opinion. There were no incidents recorded with the local housing authorities or from their neighbors.
They only had one credit card, an IKEA card with a balance of around seven thousand kronor. Neither Berit nor John had any private retirement savings or shares or other assets. John had an account with the Förenings-sparbanken, where his unemployment benefit was deposited. Berit received her salary in a private account at Nordbanken. She grossed approximately twelve thousand a month.
John had only one small life-insurance policy, through the trade union, and it was probably not worth very much, according to Riis, who concluded his report with a sigh.
“No excesses and worsening finances the past two years, in other words,” Haver summarized.
“There was one more thing,” Riis said. “In October, John received a deposit into his account of ten thousand kronor. It was an electronic deposit that I have not been able to follow up on yet. I’ll do so later this morning,” Riis added in a for-him unusually defensive tone, as if he was expecting to be criticized for not having all the facts at his disposal.
Haver considered the information; it was clearly the most interesting thing to have come to light so far.
“Ten thousand,” he said, looking like he was thinking about what he would do with ten thousand kronor. “We can only speculate at this point as to where it came from, but it sounds a little fishy.”
Fredriksson coughed slightly.
“Yes,” said Haver, who knew him well.
“We now know what John did late yesterday afternoon,” Fredriksson said casually. “He was stocking up on booze at the liqour store and then he dropped in on a friend, Mikael Andersson, who lives on Väderkvarnsgatan. He called last night and is coming to the station in half an hour.”
“What time was John there?”
“He dropped in around five and stayed for half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes.” Fredriksson went through the rest of Mikael Andersson’s account.
“Okay,” Haver said. “Now we can start tracing him. Mikael Andersson lives on Väderkvarnsgatan, which is a block or so from the main square. How would he get home?”
“Bus,” Bea said. “You don’t walk all the way up to Gränby when you have two big bags of bottles. I wouldn’t, at any rate.”
“I think the number three goes from Vaksalagatan,” said Lundin, whose contributions at morning meetings were getting increasingly sporadic. Haver sensed that his increasing germophobia and obsession with cleanliness were to blame.
“We’ll have to check in with the appropriate bus drivers,” Haver said.
“Maybe we should post a guy at the bus stop at around the time we think John took the bus and have him show people a picture of John and…”
“Good idea,” Haver said. “A lot of people take the same bus on a regular basis. Lundin?”
Lundin looked up with surprise.
“That time of day is tricky for me,” he said.
“I’ll do it,” Berglund said and gave Haver a dark look. He hated seeing Lundin’s pained and confused expressions.
“The brother—that’s where we should plunge the
knife, isn’t it?” said Sammy, who had been quiet until now. He sat at the opposite end of the table, so Haver hadn’t even noticed him.
Ottosson drummed his fingers on the table.
“He is a bottom-feeder,” he said. “A particularly nasty bottom-feeder.”
In Ottosson’s world there were “decent people” and “bottom-feeders.” The latter had lost some of its force since so many bottom-feeders swam around the city. Many in schools, as Sammy pointed out repeatedly through his work on street violence.
Beatrice thought of John’s hobby and imagined his brother, Lennart, swimming around in the fish tank as a “particularly nasty bottom-feeder.”
“Me and Ann were the last ones to take him in,” Sammy said. “I wouldn’t have anything against reeling in this particular barracuda.”
Enough with the metaphors, Haver thought.
“We’ll have him in for questioning. It sounds reasonable to let you do the first round,” he said, nodding to Sammy Nilsson.
The meeting ended after another fifteen minutes of speculation and planning. Liselotte Rask remained behind with Ottosson and Haver to discuss how much information to release to the public.
Sammy Nilsson thought about Lennart Jonsson and tried to remember how he and Ann Lindell had dealt with him. For the most part it was Ann who had managed to connect with him. Lennart Jonsson was a professional. He didn’t get intimidated or tricked into saying too much. He gave them only the bare minimum. He was helpful when it suited him, and closed as a clam if need be.
Sammy recalled the mixed feelings that this notorious criminal had inspired in him. It had been a mixture of helplessness, anger, and fatigue. He had been forced to realize that while Lennart Jonsson most probably was guilty of everything he stood accused of, they had not been able to pin enough on him to get a conviction. The feeling of helplessness stemmed from knowing they could have broken down his defenses if they had had more time. And if they had managed that, Lennart would have cooperated. He knew enough to know when further resistance was futile. That was part of his professionalism, to acknowledge when the game was up and then be willing to cooperate with the police. Sammy had the feeling that Lennart Jonsson didn’t like to play games. If you got away with it, fine, if not, bad luck.
The princess of Burundi Page 7