Black Lies, Red Blood: A Mystery

by Kjell Eriksson

“Go ahead and head off for the sticks,” said Fredriksson generously.

  They ended the call. Fredriksson had arrived at the police building, went in the main entrance, and took the elevator up to the waiting Forss.

  But instead of the prosecutor, he encountered Beatrice Andersson and Berglund standing in the corridor outside Ottosson’s open door. Unlikely, he thought. Beatrice has a free Saturday, and Ottosson there besides. And Berglund! But then he understood the connection, Ottosson had called them in.

  Beatrice turned around.

  “Good that you came,” she said. “A few things have emerged. Kurt Johansson has started to talk a little.”

  Who the hell is Kurt Johansson, wondered Fredriksson.

  Thirty-seven

  Ann Lindell did her level best not to burst into tears. Beside her at the kitchen table, Erik was having breakfast, yogurt with cornflakes and a caviar-paste sandwich on rye. He smiled a little uncertainly.

  “I couldn’t wait,” he said, “I got so hungry.”

  “That’s fine, honey, you’re very clever.”

  She tousled his hair, bent over, and kissed his neck.

  “Are you still sick?”

  “No, I feel a lot better,” she reassured him.

  After preschool on Fridays they always shopped at Torgkassen, buying a little something special before the weekend. Breakfast, especially on Saturdays, was usually substantial, with warm sandwiches, boiled eggs, smoked ham, fruit, sometimes pancakes with strawberry jam, and other things they didn’t have during the week.

  But yesterday had not been a typical Friday, no shopping and no cozy evening. Erik fell asleep in front of his video and when Sammy Nilsson left, Ann carried Eric to the bedroom, undressed him and tucked him in, and then sat for a long time by his bed looking at her son.

  She did not go to bed until two. She limited herself to one glass of wine. Sleep would not come until it was starting to get light. It was now ten o’clock in the morning. She was awakened by the phone, sat up half asleep and answered, sure that it was about work. But it was Sammy Nilsson wondering how she was feeling. He also told her that in the morning he had e-mailed Anders Brant and that Tärnsjö was waiting. He ended the call by encouraging her to phone if anything came up.

  “We’ll have a big breakfast tomorrow instead, okay?” said Ann.

  Erik nodded, but did not look convinced.

  “I want to do something fun.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “Go swimming,” he said.

  “We’ll do that,” she said. “It looks like it’s going to be a nice day.”

  “It’s super hot out.”

  “Have you been on the balcony?”

  He nodded.

  “You’re not allowed out on the balcony alone, you know that.”

  “I was afraid the food had run out,” he said morosely.

  In a big box on the balcony Erik was cultivating tortoiseshell butterflies, small caterpillars that he fed with nettles he gathered in the bushes at preschool where he had also found the caterpillars and come up with the idea of raising his own. A few had already pupated and he was now waiting eagerly for the arrival of the butterflies. Ann thought the caterpillars were disgusting but let him have his way.

  “We’ll go to Fjällnora,” she decided. “But first I have a few things to take care of.”

  She was not clear what it was she had to take care of, but she felt she needed to think things over properly. Yesterday’s feeling of total dejection at a life that lacked meaning had rocked her foundations. She had had real lows before, but Brant’s duplicity triggered something she had never experienced, a wish to just lay down and let go of everything.

  She was drained of all energy, there were no reserves left. Sammy’s intervention had rescued her from total collapse. She felt anxious when she thought about what might have happened if he hadn’t shown up; maybe the preschool staff would have called for an ambulance or taken her to the nuthouse. In the state she was in she would have been unable to protest or even care. She would have let herself be taken anywhere, and that was what frightened her the most. She had jeopardized Erik’s well-being.

  Now she had escaped with no more than a scare, and admittedly Erik was hesitant, she noticed that in his actions, but he did not have to experience a total shipwreck.

  * * *

  She sat down on the couch with a new notepad, a white, blank sheet before her, and her pen at the ready. It did not worry her that no words came immediately to jot down. She was accustomed to that. Many times she sat that way, sometimes for an hour or more, before she started writing.

  But now she did not have the time, and Erik would soon start pattering around her like a lost soul.

  “Car” was the first thing she wrote, then “moped.” Then five minutes passed before the next notation, “spade.”

  In between a murder happened, she thought, trying to imagine the scene at the old shed. So common, a shed. Did Fredrik believe, and later perhaps Andreas, that Klara Lovisa would want to lose her virginity that way, on a dirty floor, in that setting? The girl who wanted to wait. Ann Lindell could understand her decision, imagine her tension, her expectation, but not that she would ever accept such a scenario. Never. Lindell had read her diary, the girl was a romantic, but in a touching, mature way, perhaps even more aware of the conditions of love than Lindell was, almost thirty years older. That was what she thought when she read the diary.

  “Rape,” she wrote. The word screamed violence. The one who supplied the violence was capable of pushing Klara Lovisa down on the floor, pressing his hands around her neck, watching her gasp for air and finally stop struggling and go limp. He must possess not only physical strength but also anger beyond what Lindell could imagine.

  Perhaps the scene of the murder and the discovery site were one and the same. Perhaps she had tried to run away, in her confusion dashed into the forest and been caught, pulled down into the moss, and murdered.

  Fredrik and Andreas, were they capable of this? It could not be ruled out, but something told Lindell that they lacked just that anger. They were excited, they were eager to have sex with her, they were in a hurry, they wanted to take her virginity as a trophy, to win. But were they capable of violence?

  Fredrik had reacted with childish rage, left her to manage as best she could. How did Andreas behave? Pleading, a little pathetic, perhaps. He was also a romantic. The necklace, that was certainly just the right thing for Klara Lovisa, but she could do without his teenage, panting eagerness; his begging puppy-dog eyes. He would have been angry too, but mainly sad. Tears came easily to him, Lindell had seen that.

  He had slouched away, crushed, with a shock that turned into anxiety when she never came back again, either to him or to life. If he was innocent of murder, he probably felt guilty of her death. He must be constantly asking himself whether he could have saved her life by acting a different way.

  That was the reason for his lies! He could not bear to tell what had really taken place. He could not admit to anyone that he could have driven Klara Lovisa home, but didn’t; he, the only person on earth who could have saved her life. He betrayed her.

  The insight came to Ann Lindell just as Erik came into the living room. He had a pair of swimming trunks in his hand.

  “They’re worn out,” he said.

  “I bought you a new pair,” said Ann.

  “What color?”

  “Blue.”

  Erik looked at her a moment, their eyes met. She smiled.

  “Is that okay?”

  Erik shrugged and disappeared.

  Ann looked at the words she had written. If she could get Andreas to admit that he had gone to the shed, because she was convinced he had, then the timetable could be improved. Every minute that she could chart the last part of Klara Lovisa’s life also brought Ann Lindell closer to the murderer. Maybe Klara Lovisa said something to Andreas before he went back to town? Something that might cast light on what she intended to do. Perhaps
Andreas had seen something, encountered someone on the way home, met the third man? A little shard would be enough. It might lead her closer.

  What am I doing, she wondered suddenly. It’s Saturday, a beautiful summer day, and Erik wants to do something fun.

  She closed the pad and got up.

  “Let’s go now,” she called, and Erik showed up immediately, as if he had been waiting in the hall.

  Ann wanted to embrace him, promise him that everything would be fine, but she refrained from hugs and promises. It would just make him even more nervous, and could she really say that everything would be fine?

  Thirty-eight

  “We’ve sewed on your ear,” someone said.

  He assumed it was a doctor, a man in his fifties, with tired, greenish brown eyes, a thin mustache, and puffy cheeks, who was leaning over him. His eyes were fixed on him the way doctors’ eyes do.

  Anders Brant had a feeling that the doctor had been talking to him for some time, he could faintly recall someone repeating his name, a hand on his shoulder, a vague odor, antiseptic, but also onion.

  “My ear?”

  The doctor nodded, smiled a little, probably pleased at having made contact.

  Brant closed his eyes. His head was aching, pounding. He remembered Monica, sank bank into the darkness, his body felt heavy as lead, formless, as if it didn’t belong to him. He exerted himself to the utmost to remember anything other than the whore he had bought.

  Someone was moistening his lips.

  “Señhor Andrés?”

  A hand on his chest. Worry, thought Brant, they’re worried. He was not able to open his eyes.

  “Ivaldo?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened?”

  “A bus. You stepped out into the street, the Pituba bus came.”

  Geography came first. A map of Salvador slowly appeared in his mind.

  “Ondina, Barra, Sete Portas,” he mumbled.

  “No, Pituba.”

  The map became clearer and clearer. Memories flowed up and merged like dream sequences: Largo Santana. A boy came up and asked for a chicken bone. When he was refused, he spit on the food and ran, rounding the church in the middle of the square and disappearing down toward the sea; a demonstration on a square, a man separated from the group, he spoke without amplification but his voice sounded surprisingly strong; the mussel gatherers, their sinewy backs against the light, the shouts and laughter across the banks and how he loved life then.

  “You gave us money. Why?”

  Money. It costs money. What does it cost to sew on an ear? I have to ask. The darkness came back, the map disappeared, the memories were eradicated.

  “Vanessa,” Anders Brant mumbled.

  Thirty-nine

  “We’re old sports buddies, after all,” Berglund explained.

  He was smiling quietly to himself, as if remembering something. The others—Bea, Ottosson, and Fredriksson—waited.

  “Sometimes we run into each other in town. Kurt works downtown, you might say, collects cans and panhandles a little change from people. He’s shrewd in some ways, inventive, but a little out of his mind sometimes. It’s hard to know what he’s thinking. He often starts crying, but then he was a painter.”

  “Why do painters in particular cry?” Bea wondered, but Berglund continued as if he hadn’t heard the question.

  “This morning when I was out with the pooch, I ran into Kurt outside the old prison. He had been sleeping on a boat down at Flottsund and was on his way to town.”

  “Walked from Flottsund? That must be ten kilometers at least.”

  Berglund smiled at Fredriksson.

  “Kurt has always been in good shape. And he can’t take the bus because then he throws up. Balance, you know. And a bus ride is a lot of cans.”

  Beatrice could not keep from smiling at her colleague.

  “Today was a good day for Kurt, he remembered things. He was at the party at Ingegerd Melander’s and remembered the quarrel between her and Johnny Andersson. It was about Bo Gränsberg. She accused Johnny of having caused Bosse’s death.”

  “Caused, but not murdered?”

  “That’s how Kurt understood it,” said Berglund. “What the exact words were he doesn’t know, but it was a big conflict.”

  “Was it about something as common as jealousy?” Beatrice threw out.

  “I don’t think so,” said Berglund. “Bosse had been out of the picture for a month.”

  “Why haven’t the others at the party said anything?” said Beatrice. “They should have heard what the quarrel was about too.”

  “They were gone,” said Berglund. “Kurt was the last one still hanging around.”

  “So where the hell is Johnny?”

  Ottosson’s interjection put the finger on a sore point. Because even though there had been a search warrant out for Johnny for several days and they plowed through his circle of acquaintances for tips, it was as though he had been swallowed up by the earth.

  “Dead, maybe?” said Fredriksson.

  The discussion went on, they considered various angles, looking for connections between the various investigations. Fredriksson felt like he’d heard it all before and felt more and more tired, excused himself that he had to go see Forss, and lumbered off.

  The last he heard was Ottosson, as he asked what business Anders Brant had at Ingegerd Melander’s, and then Beatrice’s reply.

  “Urgent needs.”

  * * *

  The meeting with Forss was not a long one. The prosecutor decided not to do anything for the moment about the trouble at the train station. There was no reason to arrest any of those involved. The alleged crimes were too minor.

  Fredriksson was both pleased and displeased with the decision. Pleased because he could immediately put this behind him, and displeased because he wanted at least one of the creeps he had encountered in the questioning, the one who probably wrecked the hot dog stand, to have to rattle bars for a while, preferably a long while, and preferably soon.

  Instead of returning to the conversation outside of Ottosson’s office, he looked up Myhre. Fredriksson guessed that he was sitting hunched over all the binders and other material they had taken from Jeremias Kumlin’s office.

  “Nice of you to visit,” said Myhre without any ceremony, looking sincerely happy that Fredriksson in particular came by.

  Myhre was a workhorse. There were those who thought that the success of the financial unit depended on his efforts. He had been recruited from Malmö in connection with the former police commissioner’s decision to make financial crimes a higher priority, and this proved to be one of the few successful personnel efforts on the part of leadership.

  In front of him on the desk were papers in such an enormous quantity that even an experienced man like Fredriksson was amazed.

  “Is this all Kumlin’s?”

  Myhre nodded and threw out his arm toward another table where at least as many papers were piled.

  “Oil, gas, and Russia equals money,” he said. “And money equals papers.”

  “Money also equals crime,” Fredriksson quipped.

  Myhre looked surprised for a moment, as if it struck him for the first time that he was dealing with crime. Most of his colleagues were convinced that Myhre was not driven by any fervent devotion to law or desire to put financial criminals in jail, but that the motivating force for him was numbers, columns, and balance sheets.

  “Have you found anything interesting?”

  He regretted the question at once, as Myhre would almost certainly go off on a detailed account of Kumlin’s various undertakings, but the financial policeman surprised him by taking out a single sheet from the drift on the table.

  “This,” he said.

  “And this is?”

  “A purchase,” Myhre answered contentedly.

  “Of what?”

  “Of a certain Sture Millgren,” said Myhre. “Millgren is an expert on energy issues and somehow associated with the Swedish e
mbassy in Moscow.”

  “Trade attaché?”

  “No, some kind of special service from what I understand. I’ve snooped around a little and Millgren got the position over a year ago, for the sole purpose of issues about oil and gas. He came most recently from Brussels where he worked as an expert on energy issues.”

  “And you think Kumlin bought him?”

  “Yes and no. Kumlin’s partner, Oleg Fedotov, was probably the one who took care of the actual transaction, but Kumlin was aware of it. And our Mr. Millgren was not cheap.”

  “A case of Russian caviar, perhaps?”

  Myhre shook his head.

  “Considerably more, about a million to be more exact.”

  Fredriksson stared at the contentedly grinning Myhre.

  “Dollars,” he added.

  “That’s over six million kronor!”

  Fredriksson sat down.

  “Then you can imagine what kind of money this is about in the end,” said Myhre.

  “And what would Fedotov and Kumlin get in return?”

  “That’s just what I was thinking about, but obviously it has to do with oil and gas.”

  “Jesus H. Christ,” said Fredriksson. “This is getting too big.”

  “And why does Kumlin die? Did he get cold feet, was he careless with the money, or what?” Myhre speculated.

  “We had a similar case many years ago, before you came to town,” said Fredriksson. “Then it was the CEO of a pharmaceutical company, Cederén was his name. A pure contract job.”

  “So Fedotov sends one of his torpedoes to silence his partner?”

  “It may have happened that way,” Fredriksson mumbled, who was taken back in his thoughts to the Cederén family’s horrible fate. “Maybe we can set up protection for Henrietta Kumlin,” he said. “It is conceivable—”

  “Then we would have found her in the garage too,” said Myhre. “No, I think it was Jeremias who was the target and no one else.”

  “We’ll have to present this to Ottosson and Hällström,” said Fredriksson. “You can compile what you’ve come up with so far. It’s a little delicate of course with a Swedish diplomat involved.”

  “He’s not really a diplomat, more a consultant associated with the embassy.”