Sammy decided to drive out to Lennart’s apartment right away. He thought about calling Ann and discussing the situation with her but held off. She was on maternity leave and deserved to be left in peace.
He was relieved to leave the station. The last few incidents of street crime had resulted in a good deal of desk time, with reports to write and all kinds of calls to make to the necessary authorities and school personnel. Teenage criminals were among the most depressing things Sammy knew. Not that he didn’t like teenagers. He coached a soccer team a few nights a week. He knew how fun kids could be despite their rowdy behavior.
He always thought of the boys on his team when he was confronted with trouble on the street, many of those guys only three or so years older than his soccer players. Two different worlds.
The kids on the team were the well-adjusted sort who came from a relatively affluent suburb. These were children whose parents were involved in their lives, driving them to practices and meets, and who knew the other parents, from neighborhood associations and PTA meetings.
The boys Sammy met through his profession were of a whole different category. They came from one of the large housing districts on the outskirts of the city, an area many Uppsala inhabitants had never even seen, existing for the majority only as a name that often figured in headlines.
A few of the boys did sports. Sammy had seen a few of them at the UIF boxing association, boys with talent who had come in from the street and were now directing their energies at the punching bag.
If we just had the time, he thought, and would often say, we could manage these kids as well. All they lacked was time and resources. Sammy Nilsson had not grown cynical, something he saw in several colleagues. He still defended the gang members, upholding the possibility of life without crime and drugs, but it was a position that claimed a high price to maintain, and he wondered how long he would be able to hold out. The year before, it had been even harder for him to hold on to his positive outlook.
It had also become harder to discuss this with his colleagues. All too often Sammy’s speeches about the importance of good neighborhoods and schools were met only with dismissive comments. It was self-evident, it was written on every wall, they seemed to say, but who had time to bike around Stenhagen and Gottsunda, playing the nice police officer, offering the friendly ear?
When he talked to school counselors, curators, preschool teachers, and social workers, they breathed the same air of defeat. Every day the papers announced budget cuts in the public sector: health care, education, and social services.
Sammy Nilsson and his colleagues were forced to take up the slack.
Lennart Jonsson was woken up by someone banging on the door. The ringer had stopped working over half a year ago. He knew what it was all about. In some ways he was surprised that it had taken so long for the police to turn up.
He opened the door, but immediately turned around and walked back into the apartment.
“Just have to take a whiz,” he yelled.
Sammy Nilsson stepped inside. The air was stale, musty. He waited in the hall. He heard the sound of the toilet being flushed. Next to the mirror there were three framed prints by Carl Larsson. Sammy sensed that Lennart had not chosen them himself. Two coats hung on hooks under the hat shelf. If you overlooked the pungent grocery bags filled with empty beer cans by the door, the sparsely furnished entrance hall looked not unlike the waiting room of Sammy’s dentist, which was located in a 1950s downtown apartment building.
Lennart came out of the bathroom, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, half untucked. He was barefoot and his black hair stood on end. Their eyes met. For a moment Sammy felt as if he were visiting an old friend, and he had the impression that Lennart was thinking the same thing.
“I’m sorry about your brother.”
Lennart nodded, breaking eye contact. When he raised his eyes his expression had changed.
“Should we sit down?”
Lennart nodded again and gestured toward the kitchen, letting Sammy go first.
“What do you think?” Sammy said as a way to begin.
Lennart snorted. He removed a beer from the table.
“You were the one who knew him best. Who wanted to see Little John dead?”
“I don’t know,” Lennart said. “What do you know?”
“We’re trying to establish a clear picture of John’s life, what he was doing these past few months, this past week, the day before yesterday. You know the story. We’re still gathering pieces of the puzzle.”
“I’ve been thinking,” Lennart said. “But I haven’t been able to come up with anyone who would’ve wanted to knock off my bro. He was clean—had been for years.”
He gave Sammy a look as if to say: And don’t you try to pin some shit on him now.
Sammy Nilsson went through the usual questions. Lennart gave short answers. Once, he interrupted himself, walked over to the kitchen counter to get a banana, and consumed it in seconds. He then offered a banana to Sammy, who took one but set it down on the table.
“There’s one guy who spent a lot of time with John. Micke Andersson,” Lennart said. “Have you talked to him?”
“We have,” Sammy said, but without mentioning that Micke had contacted the police the night before.
“There aren’t a lot of us,” Lennart said, and Sammy assumed he was talking about John’s limited circle of friends.
He fetched another banana and ate it just as quickly.
“Some kind of banana diet?” Sammy asked.
Lennart shook his head. He looked thoughtful. Sammy restrained himself from asking further questions.
“The way I live, the people who are closest to you are the most important. Others can rat on you, betray you, but not a brother. Not John. We’ve always helped each other out.”
“For better and for worse, perhaps?”
Lennart snorted again.
“There are some things you’ll never get,” he said. “Why would I trust anyone else?”
No; why would he? Sammy thought.
“Sometimes you have to,” he said.
Lennart smiled faintly.
“Who’s the ‘you’ of ‘there are some things you’ll never get’?” Sammy asked.
“All of you,” Lennart said.
Sammy looked at him. He had heard enough. He knew what would follow—a harangue about the downtrodden members of society.
“When I played Ping-Pong in high school and won a match against the teacher he threw his racket at me. He had just hit a worthless serve, and when I bent over to pick up the ball he threw his racket at me with full force. It caught me behind the ear. Do you want to see the scar?”
Sammy shook his head.
“I was in a remedial class and Ping-Pong was the only thing I was good at. We used to play two, three hours a day.”
“Getting back to John for a moment,” Sammy said. “How were things at home?”
“What?”
“For him, I mean. With Berit.”
“Berit’s all right.”
“I’m sure she is, but how were things between the two of them?”
“Who’s been saying stuff?”
“No one.”
“Glad to hear it,” Lennart said.
The way Sammy saw it, Lennart had armed himself with nonchalance and arrogance. Sammy Nilsson knew he was likely to collapse without it, but nonetheless it irritated him.
“I’m trying to solve your brother’s murder,” he said.
“No shit.”
Sammy left the apartment, hurried down the stairs, and just outside the front door happened to kick an empty can into a flower bed. It landed in a heap of paper trash.
He called Ottosson from the car in order to see if anything new had turned up, but the chief didn’t have much to report. Sixten Wende had started charting movements at the snow dump in Libro. Now they had a preliminary list of all the drivers who usually trucked snow in. More names would probably be added. Wende had taken on the task o
f calling every last one of them.
Peter Lundin had checked into the tire-track patterns that had been recovered in Libro. So far they had not matched them to a car belonging to a county official. Andreas Lundemark, the only official who had any business at the dump, drove a Volvo with completely different tire prints.
“But it could be anybody, for that matter,” Ottosson said. “Someone out with their dog or on a romantic assignation.”
Sammy heard someone talking to Ottosson in the background.
“I’ll give you a call later,” Sammy said hastily. “I need to check into a few things.”
Ten
Haver stood by the car. He decided not to think about all the interrogations and background checks that had to be done, but to concentrate on the matter at hand. He had felt this before, the sense that the quantity of things to be done overshadowed the most obvious.
Take a systematic approach, he told himself, but immediately became unsure about how he should proceed.
Sagander’s Mechanical Workshop was located between a tire company and a business specializing in the installation of aluminum doors. It was the kind of building you didn’t notice unless you worked in the area.
A fence about two meters in height ran the perimeter of the yard, in which Haver picked out a couple of containers, a few pallets filled with metal scraps, and a flatbed truck piled high with scrapped pipes. A couple of bathtubs were propped up against the wall.
Haver noted that there were three cars parked in front of the building: a Mazda, an old rusty VW Golf, and a fairly new Volvo.
As he walked into the yard the clouds parted and the sun peeked out unexpectedly. Haver looked up. A crane on a nearby lot swung around and lowered its load. The crane operator paused and watched the men working below. One of them used his arm to signal to the operator, who was barely visible in the small cabin about ten meters off the ground. The crane swung around a few meters. The man made a new sign and shouted something to his colleague, who laughed and shouted something in return.
Haver’s father had been a construction worker and sometimes as a boy Haver had accompanied his father to work. This was most often on small jobs, but sometimes it had been on big residential sites swarming with people, materials, machines, and sounds.
He watched the construction workers and carpenters at work with a tug of longing, envy, even. But above all he felt a warmth well up inside him, both from the sun and from watching the workers in their coordinated efforts. Even their work clothes—jackets lined in loud colors—brought a silly smile to his face.
One of the workers caught sight of him and Haver raised his hand. The man copied his movement and continued to work.
A screeching noise from inside the workshop broke the spell. Haver returned to reality—the black asphalt breaking through the dirty snow, a mess of scrap, wood shavings, rust, loose pieces of cardboard, and the depressing aluminum facade with its windows completely covered in dust.
He sighed heavily and avoided the muckiest areas of the yard. The metal door was unlocked. Haver stepped inside and was greeted by the sound of metal, sparks from a welder, and welding smoke. An older man was carefully polishing a large stainless steel drum with an angle grinder. He took half a step back, pushed the safety glasses onto his forehead, and scrutinized his work.
He must have seen Haver out of the corner of his eye, but took no notice of him. A somewhat younger man, also dressed in blue overalls, looked up from his welding. The man with the angle grinder continued his work. Haver waited some three or four meters away, looking around and trying to imagine Little John at work.
Then he caught sight of a third figure in the dim, far end of the shop, where a man threw a metal pipe onto a workbench, pulled out a measuring stick, and somewhat carelessly measured the end of the pipe, shaking his head and finally tossing it aside. He was about fifty years of age, his hair gathered into a ponytail. He looked up, taking stock of Haver, then disappeared behind a pipe-storage unit.
In a small office tucked into one side of the room Haver saw an older man bent over a folder. Haver sensed that it was Sagander himself. He made his way over to the office, nodding to the angle grinder, meeting the young welder’s gaze, and then knocking on the glass door.
The man, who was not dressed in work clothes, pushed his glasses up onto his head and indicated for him to step inside, which Haver did. The office smelled of sweat. He introduced himself and made to take out his identification, but the man waved it away.
“I thought you’d come,” he said in a voice hoarse from whiskey. He pushed against the desk and rolled his chair out onto the floor.
“We read about Little John. Please have a seat.”
He was in his sixties, fairly short, perhaps 175 centimeters tall, with graying hair and ruddy skin. His eyes were spaced far apart and he had a big nose. Haver thought people with big noses looked strong-willed, and in Sagander’s case this was supported by his manner of speaking to and looking at his visitor.
He gave the impression of being a person who wanted results, fast.
“I understand John used to work here,” Haver said. “It must be terrible to read about it in the papers.”
“Not as terrible as it must have been for John,” the man said.
“Are you the boss?”
The man nodded.
“Agne Sagander,” he said quickly.
“How long did John work here?”
“Almost all his working life, short as it was. He wasn’t more than a boy when he started.”
“Why did he stop working here?”
“There wasn’t enough work to go around, that’s all.”
Haver sensed a streak of irritation, as if Haver wasn’t quick enough for him.
“Was he good at his job?”
“Yes, very.”
“But you let him go?”
“As I said, we have no control over the market.”
“Looks like it’s full steam ahead out there,” Haver said.
“Now is now. That’s not how things were back then.”
Haver was quiet. Sagander waited, but after a few seconds he rolled his chair over to the desk and closed the folder that lay open. Haver decided to plunge ahead.
“Who killed him?”
Sagander froze with his enormous hand suspended above the folder.
“How the hell would I know something like that?” he said. “Ask his good-for-nothing brother.”
“You know Lennart?”
Sagander made a noise that Haver interpreted as yes, but that also gave an idea of what he thought of John’s brother.
“Maybe he also worked for you?”
“Oh no,” Sagander said, and rolled out across the floor again.
“When did you last see John?”
Sagander put his hand up to his nose. He can’t keep still for a second, Haver thought.
“It’s been a while. Sometime last summer.”
“Did he come here?”
“Yes.”
“What did he want?”
“To talk, to visit.”
“Was there anything in particular?”
Sagander shook his head.
“Is there anything else you could say about John, apart from work? If you know anyone who knew him…” Haver didn’t know how he should put the question.
“Anyone who might have wanted to kill him, you mean?”
“Something like that, yes.”
“No. Can’t think of anyone. This is a workplace.”
“Can you think of anything that happened that might appear in a different light, in hindsight? Something you might connect with the crime?”
“No.”
“Did he ever ask for an advance on his salary?”
“There’s a question for you. It happened, not very often. Now and then.”
“Was he irresponsible with money?”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“Drugs?”
“No luck there. A little vodka from
time to time but nothing that interfered with his work. Maybe when he was younger, but that’s a common story.”
Sagander looked searchingly at Haver.
“You don’t have much, do you?”
“Would you mind if I talked with your men? They’ve probably worked with John.”
“All three, in fact. Of course. Talk as much as you’d like.”
Sagander had returned to his desk and reopened the folder by the time it took Haver to get up and leave the stuffy office. As Haver was closing the door the phone rang and Sagander grabbed the receiver with irritation.
“The shop,” Haver heard him say, as if there were only one metalwork shop in the whole town.
Erki Karjalainen, the man with the angle grinder, looked as if he had been waiting for Haver, because as soon as Haver stepped out of the office he signaled that he wanted to speak with him. Haver walked over to him.
“You’re from the police, aren’t you?” the man asked in a Swedish-Finnish dialect.
“That’s right. It must be written on my forehead.”
The Finn smiled.
“It’s a terrible thing,” he said, and Haver saw that he meant it. He discerned a mere suggestion of shakiness in the man’s face that betrayed his emotion.
“John was a good guy,” he continued, and his accent became more distinct. “A devil of a welder.”
These were the kind of men who beat the Russians, Haver thought.
“And nice.”
He looked over at the office.
“A good friend.”
Haver was touched by his simple words. He nodded. Karjalainen turned his head and looked at the welder. Is he as good as Little John was? Haver wondered.
“Kurre is good but John was better,” the Finn said, as if he had read Haver’s mind. “It’s a disgrace that he had to quit. There were still a few jobs and we knew things were going to get better.”
“Did they get along?”
A thoughtful expression came over Erki Karjalainen’s face, and when he spoke, his words no longer had the succinct assurance of his earlier answers.
The princess of Burundi Page 8