The princess of Burundi

by Kjell Eriksson

  Their suspicions had fallen on John almost immediately. When Mattzon had mentioned in passing that he had seen John outside the shop one Sunday in August, they had been convinced. John was the one who had stolen Ruben’s hard-earned money. A half million that was supposed to fix up the house in Spain where he and Maj-Britt were planning to retire.

  Ruben’s phone rang and he checked the caller ID, but didn’t answer. He didn’t have the energy to talk to his brother again. Instead he sat in the car and wondered what to do next. Half a million gone and the shop in ruins. He wanted to flee. Even from Maj-Britt.

  He felt no remorse for John’s fate. He was a thief and he had admitted as much, laughing Ruben right in the face. “Try to prove it,” John had said and laughed even more. What he regretted was having gone about it with so much vehemence. He should have let John go, watched him, maybe threaten to hurt his son, and in one way or another forced John to give back the money. Now it was too late. There was only one avenue of recourse and that was confronting Berit. She would no doubt deny knowing anything about the theft, but he could still use the threat against Justus.

  He looked over the ruins of the shop one last time. The spotlights that had been erected around the scene gave off a spooky light. A few of the firefighters were laughing. They were probably pleased at finally having contained the blaze.

  He turned the key in the ignition and suddenly felt as if John were sitting in the backseat taunting him. He had to turn around but saw only the rifle and the hunting bag. He let off the parking brake and rolled off toward Gränby.

  He felt that he was at a crossroads. This moment was going to determine the rest of his life. He knew he didn’t have so much time left, five or maybe ten years. The doctors had given him some reason to hope, but that was with the qualifications of taking it easy, cutting out all tobacco and alcohol. He had sold his business and stopped smoking but still had a cognac from time to time. He wanted to end his life in Spain. He had slaved for forty years, first in the shop, then as a crane operator and driver on construction jobs, and finally owning his own business with a stable of around twenty machines for hire.

  He was proud of what he had built up. It was none of anyone’s business if he had managed to put away some money on the side. He had worked for every last penny. Little John had laughed at him, but who was laughing now? He must have stashed it somewhere. The only sensible course of action was to go to Berit and get it back.

  Forty

  The revolver on the table drew his gaze like a magnet. Lennart walked out into the kitchen again and again just to look at it. He had never owned a firearm of any kind, though he had often had a knife. The idea of going around with a revolver or pistol had never appealed to him. You could never be sure what it would lead to if the going got tough. The courts always looked more harshly on firearms, and they automatically carried higher sentences. A gun in your pocket made you a hard-core criminal, but with a knife you were just another drunk bum in a brawl.

  The Belarusian dealer showed no surprise. He had heard what happened to Little John and completely understood Lennart’s need. He even sold it to Lennart on an installment plan, which he normally never did. “Do me a favor and make sure you survive,” the Russian had said laconically, “so you can pay me back my money.”

  Sergei had lived in Uppsala for four years. He had had come to Sweden via Estonia and demanded political asylum. If someone like Lennart had been in charge he would have been sent packing, but now he had to admit that he felt a certain gratitude toward him.

  Lennart had never wanted to kill anyone, but he needed a powerful weapon. With a revolver in his hand people would know he meant business.

  He couldn’t help fingering the weapon. It was beautiful and frightening, threateningly metallic, and it filled him with anticipation, as if his own importance had grown. He wanted to keep it out so he could get used to the idea that he was armed.

  Lennart had not had a drop of alcohol, not even a light beer, for thirty-six hours. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been this sober. Maybe when he had been taken into custody by the police that time. But then he had been on the verge of confessing just so he could have a beer.

  He felt like a new man, as if the old Lennart had stepped out of his body and was looking at his old shell. He saw himself walk around the apartment, stand in the window, look out at the snow, pick up the gun, and get dressed.

  Tonight he wanted to get to the bottom of this. That’s how he felt. He was sure that Berit was involved in some way, and now the truth was going to come out. He didn’t want to hurt her, he couldn’t hurt her. She was after all John’s wife and mother to Justus.

  He wanted so desperately to believe the assurances that she had been faithful, but Mossa’s words kept ringing in his ears: His whore for a wife. Strong words. He had always trusted Mossa, and why would he lie about this?

  Was it Dick? He hadn’t seen him for a long time. Someone had said he was in Holland. That may be as it is, Lennart thought. I can go there. If he thinks he can get out of this he’s wrong. I will track him down to the ends of the world if need be.

  He stepped out onto the snowy street, sober as a god and cleansed from his past life. He felt a great calm and strangely enough thought of his father. Was it the short interlude of working with Micke that had brought back these more frequent thoughts of his father? Albin had been good, not only as a welder but as a father. This conviction had grown in Lennart over the years, not least when he saw John with Justus.

  He sighed heavily. He was back on Brantings square again. No tractor, no noisy teenagers, just mounds of snow and him. His need for alcohol made his innards contract as if he had a steel wire rigged up inside, a steel wire that was slowly being turned tighter, a fragile center of despair. It could break at any moment. He could run home and have a swig of something, but that would essentially mean giving up on the search for John’s killer forever.

  He tramped on with gritted teeth. Christmas stars and blinking colored lights on the balconies lit up his way over Skomakar hill. “Albin and John,” he mumbled quietly. He felt as if Albin were with him, as if his father had stepped down from his roof and his heaven in order to support him. His father walked beside him in wordless sympathy. Occasionally he pointed up and Lennart understood that Albin had once been up there on those rooftops.

  Forty-one

  Lindell drove slowly, in part because she was not used to the car, in part because the driving conditions were less than ideal. The wind had driven snow from the fields into tightly packed drifts, and when she made it into the forest the road was deceptively slippery underneath this white cover.

  When she spotted the bell tower of Bälinge church she knew that she had made it. She had marked on Haver’s map the street where Erki Karjalainen lived. After winding her way down small roads in the densely built suburb she eventually came to a dead end. She had to turn the car around and realized that despite the map she had taken a wrong turn.

  A rising sense of irritation increased her nervousness. She recognized these symptoms. It was the feeling of creeping danger. Admittedly Justus was in safety, but something else was casting a dark shadow over her. She guessed it was the fact that a murderer was on the loose. It suddenly hit her that it was her concern for her colleagues that made her extra jumpy. Ruben Sagander could be out there somewhere in the dark December night. He had borrowed ammunition from Agne and perhaps he was still armed. Haver and Berglund would wait until their backup arrived, then they would put on bulletproof vests and approach Sagander’s house with the greatest care. She knew all this, but she also knew that violence and perpetrators of violence had their own logic.

  When she finally arrived at Karjalainen’s house and stepped out of the car she paused and pricked up her ears, as if she would have been able to hear any resulting noise from the Börje area, over ten kilometers away. Haver hated weapons, not least after the events at Biskops Arnö when he—without acceptable provocation—had opened fire again
st a serial killer whom he erroneously believed to be threatening Lindell with a pistol. Lindell had reacted by also opening fire and the man had died.

  Haver and Lindell had never talked seriously about that event. Now Haver found himself in the presence of another assumed murderer. Before she left the house, Lindell had asked Haver if he had his gun. He had nodded but not said anything. Lindell was certain that he was thinking of the fateful chain of events at the hut that summer night not so long ago but shoved away into a distant corner in both their minds.

  She took out her cell phone and called home. This time her father answered, which surprised but pleased her. Erik had been up for an hour and his grandmother was with him.

  “He’s a plucky little boy,” her father said.

  Lindell smiled and they ended the conversation soon after.

  Erki Karjalainen opened the door, a slight smile on his face. He let her in without a word, something she appreciated. She didn’t have the stomach for empty Christmas phrases.

  Justus was in the kitchen. A woman was at the stove stirring something in a pot. She looked up and smiled. There was a sweet scent in the air. The boy gave her a quick look, then cast down his eyes. On the table in front of him there was a plate and a glass of milk. Lindell sat down across from him. Erki lingered in the doorway for a moment before he also sat down at the table. The woman pulled the pot to one side, turned the heat off, and left the kitchen. Erki followed her with his gaze.

  “My sister,” he said.

  Lindell nodded and looked at Justus, who met her eyes.

  “How is it going?” she asked.

  “Fine.”

  “I’m glad you’re all right. We’ve been worried about you.”

  “I just went out for a while,” Justus said defiantly.

  “Your mother didn’t know where you were.”

  Lindell found it hard to talk to teenagers. They were neither children nor adults. She always had the feeling that she was pitching her words at the wrong level, either too childish or too advanced. She needed Sammy’s innate ability to reason with them.

  Justus scratched the plate with a knife. He looked absentminded but Lindell sensed he was boiling inside.

  “Did you hear that Sagander’s workshop burned down?” she asked quietly and leaned closer to him.

  He shook his head.

  “You know,” Erki said.

  Justus looked at him hastily and for a moment Lindell saw the terror in his eyes, as if he was afraid of Erki but conscious of the folly of denying what he had probably just confided to him. Justus nodded.

  “Tell me about it,” Lindell said.

  Justus began awkwardly, but after a while his words started to flow. He stopped in the middle of a sentence and looked at Lindell.

  “Sagge is an idiot,” he said.

  “He has only praise for your father.”

  “He fired him,” Justus said. “What good is his praise?”

  “You have a point there, Justus,” Lindell said with a smile.

  When Justus had finished his story he appeared to realize for the first time that the fire had cost Erki his job. The terror returned to his eyes and he sucked in his breath.

  “Take it easy,” Erki said, as if he had read the boy’s mind.

  “What do you want to do now?” Lindell asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Shouldn’t you call Berit and tell her where you are?”

  “Am I going to jail?”

  “You’re under fifteen,” Lindell said. “You can’t be tried as an adult. There will be consequences, of course, but we’ll keep in mind that your father has just died and that you’ve been extremely upset.”

  “One more thing,” Erki said calmly, and Lindell’s appreciation of him grew even more. “Justus has some money. Do you want me to tell her?”

  The boy said nothing. Erki waited, then started to talk.

  “He came here by taxi and I wondered where he got the money,” Erki said and stretched his hand out for a backpack leaning against the wall. Lindell sensed what it contained but drew her breath when Erki unzipped it and revealed thick wads of five-hundred-kronor notes.

  “How much is it?”

  “I don’t know,” Erki said and put the backpack down. “I haven’t counted it, but it must be a couple of thousand.”

  “I didn’t take it all,” Justus said almost inaudibly.

  “Where did the money come from?” Lindell asked.

  “It was Dad’s.”

  “From the start?”

  “We were planning to go to Africa,” Justus said defiantly. “He had saved it up so we could start a fish farm. Maybe in Burundi.”

  “Do you know where the money came from?”

  The boy shook his head.

  “I know,” Erki said. “It came from the shop.”

  “Tell me,” Lindell said.

  Erki and Justus looked at each other. Justus’s expression changed. The mixture of aggression and passivity slowly gave way to a gentler expression and Lindell saw that Justus had inherited Little John’s delicate features. The inner defenses gave way. He looked pleadingly at Erki, who took the boy’s hand in his, enveloping it completely. Half a finger was missing from Erki’s hand. Lindell and Erki exchanged a look. Lindell saw that he was touched.

  “You may not know this but he was an expert in tropical fish,” Erki said. “We all have our dreams, don’t we? Our lives…”

  Lindell waited for a continuation but it never came.

  “How do you know the money came from the shop?”

  “I’ve worked there a long time,” Erki said. “I see a lot. I know.”

  Lindell left the subject. She would get the details in due course.

  “Did Berit know about the backpack?”

  Justus shook his head.

  “I didn’t take it all. I left half.”

  “Where is it?”

  “At home in the closet.”

  “And she doesn’t know?”

  “Only Dad and I knew.”

  “Okay,” Lindell said. “I get it.”

  She turned to Erki and asked if she could use the bathroom. He pointed to the hall. Lindell left the kitchen and closed the door after her. Two children sat on the floor. They had arranged all the shoes by the door into a big pile. Lindell caught sight of her boots near the bottom. From another room came the sound of music and loud peals of laughter. Lindell felt as if she were making an educational visit to a Normal Home.

  In the bathroom she picked up her cell phone and called Haver. He told her that Ruben Sagander wasn’t home. His wife had been waiting for a few hours and had tried his cell phone but had been unable to reach him.

  “What are you doing?” Lindell asked.

  “We’ve sent out an alert,” Haver said. “We’re trying to figure out where he may have gone.”

  “He’s armed,” Lindell said.

  “We know,” Haver said.

  “Is he the one?”

  “We can’t say for sure, but the tracks in the snow appear to match up. He has a red-and-white pickup and he was at Akademiska Hospital on the same day the knife was stolen.”

  “Have you asked about the knife?”

  “His wife says he has a large number of knives,” Haver said. “The whole house is full of weapons and trophies.”

  “Motive?”

  “Money, most likely,” Haver said.

  A short pause reigned before Lindell got the words out.

  “I’m sorry for what happened.”

  “It’s okay,” Haver said, but Lindell could hear that it wasn’t.

  “I have to get home to Erik,” she said. “Justus is here with Erki Karjalainen and doesn’t want to go home yet. I think he should be able to stay awhile longer.”

  Finally she told him about the money stolen from the shop and the cash in Justus’s backpack. She hadn’t been sure she wanted to tell Haver about this. She knew she had to, but it felt like a betrayal of Erki and Justus.

 
; “Money,” Haver repeated.

  “Ola, be careful.”

  Lindell ended the call and blew her nose with a little piece of toilet paper. The children in the hall were singing a Finnish Christmas song in shrill tones. She dialed Berit’s number. When she answered, Lindell had to fight to keep the emotion out of her voice. She knew what a relief it would be for Berit to hear that Justus was fine.

  “Thank God,” she whispered.

  Lindell could imagine her expression. She swallowed and continued.

  “One more thing. In the closet in Justus’s room there’s a lot of money. It’s John’s money. I’ll tell you later how he got it. It’s not just from poker, I can tell you. I’ll be over in a while so we can talk, then my colleagues will come down.”

  “What about Justus?”

  “He’s safe here. Give him a few hours. I promise you he’s fine.”

  “Tell me more about the money. Where did it come from?”

  “I’ll be over soon. Okay?”

  She went back to the kitchen. Justus looked up.

  “I was treated to a Finnish concert out there,” Lindell said lightly and tried to smile.

  “It’s the grandkids,” Erki said.

  “Can Justus stay with you a bit longer?” she asked.

  Erki and Justus looked at each other.

  “Of course. We’ll call Berit later. I’ll bring him back.”

  Lindell nodded.

  “I’m going home now,” she said, but paused. “Good-bye, Justus. I’ll see you.”

  She gave Erki a look. He got to his feet slowly and when Lindell left the room he followed.

  “There’s one thing,” she said as she searched for her boots in the pile of shoes.

  Erki closed the door to the kitchen.

  “I want…I know this is wrong, but there’s one thing.”

  Lindell fished out one boot. She turned to Erki.

  “This thing about dreams,” she said. “Aren’t children the most important?”

  Erki nodded.

  “I was thinking…Justus dreams of Africa.”

  Erki glanced at the kitchen door and took a step closer.