The Night of the Fire

by Kjell Eriksson

  “Bring them in again, and be sure to—” Ann said mercilessly.

  “It’s not possible,” Sammy interrupted, without explaining why, but Ann could think of several reasons. “On the other hand there were a few outsiders, three if I remember right.”

  “Question them anyway.”

  “We’ll have to see. Maybe if we have time.”

  We’ll have to see, thought Ann. How wrong he is. She was convinced of the connection between the two cases of arson. That was where they had to dig, but she dropped that and changed tack.

  “Can you check another thing, if any theft of explosives from a construction site in Almunge has been reported, roughly a month ago, maybe more.”

  “What’s this about?”

  Ann hesitated to answer before she decided to tell Sammy about Justus and his old friend Erland “Smulan” Edman. “You remember the murder of Little John, Justus’s dad?”

  “Of course. Almunge, you said, and Edman, Erland.” He twisted his torso a quarter-turn, brought the computer to life, and tapped in the information he’d received. Ann observed his profile, and could see that he too had been subjected to the tooth of time.

  “It was Justus who called, but you understood that, didn’t you?”

  Sammy nodded. “In early March, on the third, about ten kilos of Austrogel were stolen from a construction site in the Almunge area. Can that be it?”

  “Could be. Was it an NCC project?”

  Sammy smiled quietly while he scrolled farther. “The foreman at NCC was Björn Thomas Rönn.”

  “Ask him for a list of employees.”

  “It already exists. It’s routine with this type of crime. No Edman, on the other hand twenty-one others. One Lindell actually.”

  “Can you print out the list?”

  “Can, I can, but will I, should I?”

  “Do a search on Edman,” Ann Lindell recommended, quite sure that in time she would get a list. “Do you have anything on him?”

  “We have nothing on Edman. What’s this shit about?”

  “Hate crime, I guess it’s called,” said Ann.

  “Something that will be blown up. The mosque? Refugee housing? God, I get so tired of it!”

  “Of what?” Ann straightened her back, suddenly struck by an insight that nothing was static, not even Sammy Nilsson. He had changed.

  Sammy looked at her in a way she hadn’t seen before, before he answered with a sobbing sound and a single word: “Everything.” Ann waited; she knew from before that he often needed time to collect his thoughts. He had practiced. The first years they worked together he would sometimes blow his top, and then go around and apologize. It was sad and time-consuming.

  “I’m so tired of the hate, this fucking hate. The loudmouths in all directions. I am tired of the idiots who throw rocks at ambulances, fire trucks, and buses.”

  “Where is that?”

  “Sävja, Gottsunda, and Stenhagen, mention any damned area where the young bastards don’t throw rocks. And what do their moms and dads do? Not a thing! They sit with their damned parabolic antennas and … They talk about honor and every other kind of shit, but then they should damned well be out on the streets when their kids are burning cars and shooting each other in the head. And I’m tired of all the Nazis, who are screaming from their side. Jesus, haven’t they learned a thing?”

  “What is it?” Ann interrupted.

  Sammy took a deep breath. “I don’t know,” he said. “They talk about alienation.”

  “There must be support services. I read something about Gottsunda.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Sammy.

  “Little John and his brother Lennart, they were outsiders too, weren’t they?”

  “But they didn’t burn cars.”

  “No, they stole the cars, and crashed them.”

  “That was different anyway,” said Sammy.

  “Their names were Lennart, Sture, and Hasse, and not Ali and Ahmed, that was one difference. There must be more, but John had a job, he was in demand, capable. Lennart too, when he was sober, that is. They had the opportunity, and they knew it! They knew there was a place. Berglund talked about this, you recall, about the gangs in the fifties and sixties? Working-class boys mostly.”

  “I’m probably just tired after a long day,” said Sammy.

  “But why is it going to hell for some?” Ann steamed ahead.

  “Tell me.”

  The printer started up and spit out a sheet that sailed down to the floor. Ann reached down and picked up the list of the work crew at NCC in Almunge.

  “Daniel Mattsson assaulted a Somali in Gimo, do you remember?”

  “I asked Bodin to check up on that. The camel boy lives in Vara these days.”

  “Where’s that?”

  Sammy did not reply, instead kept tapping on the keyboard. Lindell eyeballed the list of construction workers: eleven names ending in -son, three of which were Anderssons, besides two Lindströms, one Lindell, one Bouveng, and a few other ancient Swedish surnames. NCC was lily-white.

  “What do you see?” she asked, holding the list up in front of Sammy.

  “A ballot for the Sweden Democrats,” he said without hesitation.

  “But Bouveng sounds foreign.”

  “Walloon ancestry,” said Sammy. “They’re approved.” He resumed the amateurish pounding on the keyboard, as if he were sitting in front of an old Underwood typewriter with sluggish keys. “And Vara is far away, you hear that? He’s been cleared. Saturday evening he was at a party in Kållandsö, wherever that is, some kind of holiday, some saint or other. At least thirty witnesses.”

  “Bodin checked?”

  “He asked the colleagues down there for help. It’s airtight. He’s good, that Bodin, effective, but a Haver when it comes to corpses.”

  “It’ll work out, there are colleagues who are afraid of the living. Are there saints in Somalia?”

  Sammy looked up.

  “The connection,” he said. “Two fires, a kilometer apart.”

  “The village isn’t talking, in any case not so I hear.”

  “Not the dead either.”

  “There are two old guys who ought to be squeezed. They’re neighbors of mine.”

  “Maybe Bodin and I should make a home visit to the senior center?”

  “One is a slightly cranky carpenter, the other one is religious, but not overbearing. The carpenter would probably get a little shaky.”

  “I’ve met them before, but Bodin and I will take them tomorrow. We’ll bring the Spanish donkey along,” Sammy decided.

  “Who’s that, a trainee?”

  “Kind of,” said Sammy.

  “Good, then I’ll make cheese all day.”

  Sammy turned off the computer.

  “The list,” said Ann.

  “I’ll put someone on it, I don’t know if anyone’s checked into this. Maybe it didn’t get done, or was given lower priority. A few kilos of explosives, what’s that these days?”

  “Nice. Maybe there’s someone among the white folks in Almunge with a black heart.”

  Seventeen

  “Is it here?”

  “Let’s sit down,” said Frank Give, heading for the only vacant bench. Björn Rönn followed obediently.

  Peppartorget was full of life, that was his first impression. The food store was a magnet, people streamed in and out in a steady flow. Many came from the subway, perhaps picking up something on their way home from work. The mandatory beggar was sitting on a box outside the entry. He was an older man who did not appear to take his task all too seriously. A stand with secondhand items was run by a black woman, who also looked relaxed. Outside the pizzeria a group of teenagers was hanging around.

  “You see what it looks like. Lousy.”

  “You were born here?”

  “Then there was style. We had the Finns of course, a few Yugoslavs, but otherwise it was calm.” He had a crooked smile, and Björn Rönn could sense some of the old charisma that made Franken
stein, as he was sometimes called, a successful charmer. Where women were concerned he’d had it easy. Now a scar disfigured his one cheek, and tattoos over parts of his throat and neck did not improve things, but what definitely dragged down the overall impression was the bitterness he vented all too often.

  He talked on about the Hökarängen of his childhood. Björn Rönn listened with half an ear while he studied the people on the square.

  “Is it here?” he interrupted Frank’s verbiage.

  “Do you see the darkies? They’ve occupied the square with a fucking yurt to sell rotten fruit. That’s how it looks in every single suburb.”

  “It’s in Uppsala too. I think it’s usually cheap.” Björn said something about Vaksala Square.

  “It’s because they sell drugs too. And ISIS is there, you can bet your ass on that. Market trading is a perfect cover for the mullahs.”

  Björn checked the benches to their right and left. They were occupied by winos who howled and argued only to fall into each other’s arms at the next moment. Winos, but no darkies. As far as he could see they were of Nordic origin.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Is it that smart, I mean, a lot of people of all types are here.”

  “A point has to be made,” said Frankenstein.

  “But children.”

  “They’re in class.”

  “Infants in strollers don’t go to school.”

  “Day care,” Frank said, leaning back.

  “But it’s a Saturday.”

  “All the same.”

  Björn made an opposite movement, leaning forward, as if he felt sick, stealing a glance at his friend. He’d known Frank for several years. The first time they met was at a demonstration south of Stockholm. Frank had been just as crazy then, but the difference was that in Salem he carried a knife and now he had access to Austrogel-brand explosive sticks.

  “Then it will be Alby.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Further south,” said Frank. “Looks a lot like this. There’s a town center. We’ve selected a few more places.”

  Frank tried to give the appearance of energy, striking a clenched fist against the armrest of the bench while he counted up five suburbs: Skärholmen, Fittja, Flemingsberg, Rinkeby, and Hallunda.

  “After Alby we’ll take another square, then we’ll wait a few days before we strike one more. That’s how they do it.”

  “Who is that?”

  “The ones who know how to create terror. After that the darkies won’t dare to hawk a single tomato, and no one will shop with them. It’s important to create insecurity and chaos, then half the battle is won.”

  Björn Rönn stared toward the fountain in the square, where someone had amused themselves by pouring in shampoo. It looked playful, he liked it, likewise the children who chased foam bubbles that flew away at the slightest puff of wind. At the vegetable stand there was no invasion exactly, but a never-ending stream of customers kept commerce going. There were both light- and dark-skinned people, women in shorts and fluttering tops, as well as in hijab. A bum was holding a concert and did it reasonably well with an old popular song, one that Björn’s father used to whistle early in the morning when he was on his way to the barn. Björn tried to make out the words, but the distance was too far and the song soon died away.

  “Shall we have a beer?”

  “I’m driving.”

  “Whatever,” said Frank. “Let’s go to my place. I think Lena has fixed something.”

  He did not await an answer but instead got up from the bench. Björn hesitated, but followed. He had to pick up the car outside Frank’s house anyway.

  When they had walked awhile Frank pointed at the grocery store’s sign with a sneer. “ICA Bomb. Fits fucking well.”

  Sjöskumsvägen, the street where Frank lived, was in a neighborhood that Björn guessed was built in the forties. He had helped renovate numerous similar areas, including several in Uppsala. They sat on the balcony with a view of an extended greenbelt where there was a wading pool, with swings, slides, and sandboxes visible farther away. Everything was worn, but still marked by the concept the planners once had, airy and functional. Children were playing in the pool. Their voices and shrieks echoed in the warm spring evening. That was something he missed, children’s voices. It was silent in Rasbo, and had been a long time, in any event where he and his brother lived.

  Frank Give talked on. His wife, Lena, had set out tacos. There was beer in a cooler on the floor.

  “You can sleep over,” she offered when Björn said no to a Singha.

  He smiled and shook his head. His mouth was full of chips and some green mush. He didn’t like that kind of finger food, but ate anyway, and tried to show something that resembled appetite. But the fact was that he felt nauseated.

  “I have to get up early,” he said, when he finally managed to swallow the Mexican slop.

  Eighteen

  “I wish I knew,” said Gösta Friberg in a wistful tone of voice.

  The old man is bluffing, thought Sammy, not based on any certain indications, but perhaps mostly on the basis of routine mistrust. The old carpenter seemed calm and collected, not at all shaky as Ann had maintained.

  “You see, I dream sometimes, and for a long time I thought it was just a dream. Irma, my wife who passed away some time ago, maintained that I walked in my sleep too, but that I don’t know. She talked so much, she said I snored too. You know how it is, a person gets blamed for so many things.” Then he went on, told about Irma and other things they hadn’t asked about and reasonably had no interest in, turned toward Bodin as if to draw him into the conversation, but Bodin showed his stoniest face and did not say a word about the old man’s harangue.

  The silence that followed was heavy. Sammy went up to the window and peered out in the direction where the school had once been. Bodin focused all his interest on the old stove and whitewashed brickwork.

  “Why do you have the Advent star up? It’s May.”

  “It was Irma who set it up, and then it didn’t get taken down. They probably think I’m nuts, but I don’t have it lit, not until Advent, but that’s a while yet. I took down the elves in the window anyway.”

  “Tell us now!” said Bodin, who wasn’t interested in Christmas decorations.

  “I thought it was a dream,” Gösta Friberg repeated. “You all probably think I’m lying, but I didn’t recognize any of them. They were like shadows in the night.”

  Bodin straightened up and interrupted the verbiage. “You said there were two of them.”

  Friberg nodded.

  “We don’t buy that talk about a dream.” Bodin’s voice was harsh, and so filled with contempt that it made Sammy turn around. “You already knew then, that night, that what you saw was completely real. It was arson you witnessed, and you kept your mouth shut.”

  Friberg shook his head.

  “Why?”

  “I was confused … everything happened so fast … I’m afraid of fire.”

  “So afraid that you let people burn up inside.”

  Sammy made a cautious gesture with one hand, but Bodin steamed ahead.

  “Afraid of something else too, huh? That kid in your car, the one who died, did you see him too?”

  Friberg took a step closer to Bodin, as if he wanted to attack him.

  “You saw that he got into the car, but didn’t do a thing.…”

  “Stop!” Gösta Friberg screamed.

  “He froze to death because of your passivity … because you’re afraid of fire, my goodness.”

  “It wasn’t like that,” said Friberg, sinking down on a chair.

  Bodin stared at him a few seconds, before he left the kitchen. Sammy sat down on the other side of the kitchen table.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  “I didn’t see him, I promise. Not until it was too late. Two days too late.”

  “I believe you,” said Sammy.

  “I think about him every day. It’s a nightmare. He looked so
young.”

  “They are young.”

  “But everyone says that they lie about their age.”

  Sammy wanted to ask who “everyone” was, but let it be. He could guess how the talk went around the village.

  “What happened with his cousin?”

  “I think he ran to the forest, and froze to death too. We have wolves in the area, and lynx.”

  “Who did you see?”

  Gösta Friberg looked up. Sammy could see a hint of relief in the old carpenter’s face.

  “I don’t know, but I’m glad that I told you that there were three of them, that the fire was set. There’s no doubt about that.”

  “Were you born in the village?”

  Friberg nodded and made a gesture with his hand, as if to show that he grew up there in the cottage.

  “You know every pine cone in the area, isn’t that so?”

  “Yes, but it was dark and I was confused. It was night, everything happened so fast.”

  “You’ve said that before, but you’ve changed your story. Five minutes ago there were maybe two arsonists, now there are three. Who’s been added?”

  “I think that maybe there were three.”

  “Think about it. Protecting a criminal is being an accessory. People were trapped in the fire, froze to death. Do you really want to live with the knowledge that murderers go free?”

  Sammy Nilsson did not wait for an answer, but instead stood up and left the kitchen and the cottage. On the front stoop he took a deep breath. It smelled of summer and for a moment he was transported. He thought about Ann, who in a radical move changed her life, resigned, got a new job, and moved. In other words it was possible, he thought, with a mixed bag of shame, euphoria, and anxiety. His own situation was different, he was married and his daughter had left home, and his bonds with Angelika had always been strong, even if they were now under serious strain. And could he truly become a crofter in the country and work in a cheese factory, with a cute hairnet on his head?

  Bodin was standing by the car talking on the phone, but ended the call when Sammy was approaching.