Sammy interrupted the interview, walked a short distance away to call his colleagues in Östhammar. Fortunately he got hold of Brundin, who promised to immediately drive to Therese’s and go through her shed. “I see, what do you know, a murder weapon,” Brundin said dryly.
Then Sammy called Technical, got to speak with Wikman.
“Is it possible to secure fingerprints on a pine branch?”
“Possible, probably depends on the surface. What do you have going?”
“A murder weapon,” Sammy said, repeating his colleague’s words. “It’s in Östhammar, I’m told. The colleagues there will take the branch to Uppsala. Okay?”
* * *
The interview resumed. The obvious question was asked. Andreas Mattsson fished a piece of paper from his back pocket, unfolded it, and set it on the table.
“It was because of this I drove to Hamra that night.”
Sammy picked up the soiled paper, quickly read the text, which encompassed about ten lines and ended with Andreas’s signature.
“You intended to show this to Daniel?”
Andreas nodded. “We’d argued a couple of days before. Completely unnecessary! It wasn’t his fault that things were the way they were on the farm. We were both victims of that old bastard’s greed and talk about inheritance, traditions, and how important it was to protect the farm. Sell the shit, was my suggestion!”
“It couldn’t wait? I mean, showing the paper to Daniel.”
“Nothing could wait. I’d waited long enough. The same day, before I went to Therese’s, I called the old man and resigned! Can you understand? I resigned from the hauling business and the farm.”
Now came the emotions. He stood up but remained by the table. Sammy gave him time.
“What did he say?”
“He just laughed. I think he was satisfied in a way, even though he lost a driver.”
“You call Waldemar Mattsson during the day to resign, and that night you’re going to show a paper to your brother where you renounce everything, all rights to Hamra Farm and Contracting, have I understood that correctly?”
“Exactly like that. I wrote it in the office and printed it out. Then I saw the flames. It was on fire in a few seconds. The smithy was dry as dust.”
“I assume we can find everything on the office computer. There’s probably a log for the printer too.”
Andreas nodded. Now that all was said he looked indifferent.
“Why did you tell what you’d seen? At Sebastian Ottosson’s.”
“It just turned out that way. I was there and was going to talk with Sebby about fence posts. He didn’t have enough, he thought. He’s not that experienced.”
“Who was listening?”
“Sebby, of course, and his buddies. I know Stefan from before and then there was another, Rasmus, I’ve only seen him a time or two.”
“It just turned out that way? You didn’t tell us, but three others, just like that.”
“Sebby said something about Rothe leaving the village, and there was a little talk.”
“You never confronted Sam Rothe?”
“Why nag about that? Daniel was dead.”
“Explain!”
“It wasn’t possible to do anything about it.”
“It wasn’t the case that you wanted revenge? He was your brother, after all.”
“No, I just wanted out of here. And then I felt sorry for Rothe, that he would have to go to prison.”
“You said nothing to the three at Ottosson’s about…”
“I didn’t say shit! Other than what I saw.”
“How did they react?”
“I think they were shocked. Rothe was no killer exactly.”
“And now he’s dead.”
“He probably had a guilty conscience.”
“There are signs that he was murdered.”
Andreas Mattsson’s surprise could not be mistaken. “I’ll be damned…” he blurted out, before he realized what Sammy was fishing for.
“You think I hanged him?”
“You let a murderer go free, but perhaps you had the idea to take care of it on your own? Or that some others could fix it. Maybe on direct order.”
“Forget that. Don’t you understand? I’ve left this. In two weeks I’m flying to Manila.”
“A murder is a good reason to leave the country. I want you to get your passport.”
Fifty-Nine
After taking leave of Bertil Efraimsson, Ann Lindell walked slowly homeward, overcome by a peculiar mixture of satisfaction and despondency. The former came from the fact that the arsons appeared to be solved, and hopefully that would put an end to some of the talk in the village. She was satisfied besides at her own effort, and the department’s. Sammy, Bodin, and the others had conducted themselves well. Finally, you might add. That gladdened an old police heart.
The despondency came from the fact that Tilltorp had been transformed, the tone had changed, trust had taken a knock, but also from the reactions of outsiders—many who had not even visited the village had strange ideas. At the gym in Österby talk had spread the whole spring, every time she’d gotten questions whether anything new had come out. “But you must know something!” a Zumba participant blurted out when Ann refused to speculate. Maybe they thought that as a former police officer she had access to special information.
As an undercurrent, mostly unexpressed, was the understanding that it was the fault of “the others.” “What business did they have here, I mean from the start?” was a line she heard from a customer at the creamery. A plumber, a normally sympathetic and humorous man who lived in the neighborhood, and who helped out with some small jobs at work, had mentioned that they couldn’t even speak Swedish. “They want subsidies, but don’t want to learn the language” was his analysis. Would she ever be able to joke with him like she’d always done? Even her closest neighbor had undergone a metamorphosis during the spring, from cozy uncle in carpenter’s pants to a real grouch.
Small displacements. Words that crept in. She looked around. A car approached, too fast and too close. She was forced to step down in the ditch. She hadn’t seen it before, a dark BMW that skidded outside her lane. There were many passersby who didn’t understand that curve. Before her time, Gösta had said, a car had crashed right into the lilac hedge on the other side. She memorized the license plate number, a sheer reflex, and took out her phone to call and check who the owner was. That benefit, calling the station and quickly getting information, she still had. She still had friends left at the department.
“Missed Call,” the display said. The number was known, but not listed in her contacts. She browsed back in her call list, had to browse a long time before it showed up. She wondered who it could be. She counted days, tried to put the number in a context, see which other ones were right before and after, but got no wiser. She opened Eniro and checked the number: “Justus Jonsson.”
When she closed the browser she discovered two new voice messages. She listened. Clicked off, stood completely breathless, stock-still, before she routinely checked the time when they were entered, and then listened to them a second time. The words were etched in.
Sixty
The phone vibrated. Justus took it out of his pocket.
“Don’t answer,” said Give.
“It’s my mom. I have to answer, otherwise she’ll come here. She lives in the area, and she’s constantly worried.”
They looked at one another. Justus wondered whether Give knew that Little John had been murdered, and how that affected Berit. Maybe Smulan had talked. He liked to lay it on thick about that. Give nodded.
“Hi, Mom, how’s it going?”
He went up to the window, stood with his back turned to the trio who were parked in the living room: Give and Nyström on the sofa and Erland on the armchair.
“Of course I’ve heard. Everyone’s talking about it.”
Molngatan was deserted.
“Yes, Smulan has always been a little crazy, you k
now that, but I don’t think he was involved in the bombing in Stockholm.”
At the turnaround’s parking lot, at the far end of the street, were two black cars, newly washed, both with tinted windows. A Volvo V90 and an SUV of a make and model unknown to Justus.
“Call Mirjam, I think she would appreciate it. Console her and that, but talk more about Li’l Erland.”
Justus peered in the other direction. Gränby Bilgata, which ran perpendicular to all the various “weather” streets, was just as deserted.
“Maybe you can go there? Her mother is completely nuts and I think her sister lives in Enköping.”
Vaksalagatan, one of the city’s main arteries, which runs all the way from Stora Torget to the northeast exit and which on a late afternoon was always busy, was almost completely quiet. A couple of two-axle transport vehicles painted green with no company name passed going east. They gave the impression of belonging to the military.
“No, he hasn’t called me.”
The bus stop was abandoned.
“Of course, do you think I’m crazy? Call Mirjam!”
This is not normal, Justus thought, it shouldn’t be this quiet. It could only mean one thing: Lindell had heard his message and understood, realized the seriousness. Soon the storm would come to Molngatan. He laughed.
“That’s good, Mom, we’ll talk later. Now I’m going to make an omelet.”
He clicked off, remained standing for a moment by the window to collect himself before he turned around. He understood that he was in the eye of the storm, and what that could mean. Smulan met his gaze. In his old buddy’s eyes was a mixture of defiance and loss, maybe a little hate too. He surely didn’t like hearing Mirjam’s and Li’l Erland’s names. Justus lowered his gaze and went toward the kitchen. He had to think something over. The kitchen was perhaps the best place to be.
Sixty-One
Wikman’s message was brief but informative: “Print on the pine branch belongs to Sam Rothe. Blood and tissue fragments have been sent for analysis.”
Sammy was divided. In a way a dead perpetrator was nice. There’s less paperwork was his immediate, frivolous thought, but at the same time it was a shame that Sam Rothe’s posthumous reputation was that of a murderer. It also gave support to the village’s perception that he’d been a failed person, and also reduced Rönn’s and Sanberg’s crime of hanging the rabbit man from a beam. They only demanded just revenge, some would surely think.
Tilltorp would become a bit poorer without the rabbit man, it struck Sammy, a quality lost. There should always be eccentrics, those who deviated, walked to the side, who asserted their right to live a different life. They could be called village idiots or fools, but they gave the lives of the well-adjusted a necessary thorn. Wasn’t Bertil Efraimsson also a village idiot in his own way? Both had also shown their generosity by giving the laughing Hazara a sanctuary.
Perhaps Andreas Mattsson would get his passport back and in two weeks be sitting on a plane to Southeast Asia, if he would not now be indicted for obstructing a homicide investigation. He had actually kept his mouth shut about his brother’s killer. That in itself that was such strange behavior that with the help of capable lawyering maybe he could wriggle out of an indictment.
Hamra Farm & Contracting AB would never be what it had been. What would Waldemar Mattsson do? To an outsider his striving now stood out as meaningless, something that Allan Sanberg had mentioned in passing. “Like my life,” he’d added.
It’s hate that grinds down all efforts; to get to breed rabbits and other small animals in peace on an isolated smallholding in a backwater, or build a prosperous farm and haulage company, or as in Allan Sanberg’s case be a small cog in the construction of society that assumes a kind of baton passed on by one generation to the next.
Hate crushes both the one who hates and the one who is rejected, scorned and despised.
* * *
Sammy sat in his office, which was a sanctuary in the chaos that had erupted, even if he kept the door open in order to catch some of what was happening.
The bombers were in the city! The siege of Molngatan and Gränby had started. Once again Ann Lindell had submitted the decisive information. How the hell did she manage? He could picture her rocking in her hammock in her rural idyll.
From there his thoughts went to Angelika. It’s over, he’d repeated however many times the past few days, and nothing had happened to refute that assertion. On the contrary, Angelika had sounded even harsher the last time they talked. She was in no hurry to come back. Does she have someone else? The thought struck Sammy again, but he immediately dismissed it. She would have told him; she was that honest.
“Okay,” Sammy said out loud. “Let it be that way.” He’d gotten used to the idea. In any event during the day. At night she rode him like before. It felt like mockery. For the first time since his teens he’d had emission in his sleep. That made him furious in the night. “Danish bitch!”
The cautious knocking on the doorpost made him start. It was Bodin. “Stolpe is worse,” he said. “Complications, they say.”
“What kind of complications?”
Bodin shrugged.
“Is he dying?”
“I’m sure he will, but the question is when.”
Bodin’s comment brought Sammy to his feet. He rounded the desk and had time to perceive his colleague’s terrified expression before Sammy slammed the door right in his nose. It was simply the case that at that moment he didn’t want to have any colleagues at all, either living or dead.
Sixty-Two
“Should we go and retrieve the weapons?” he heard Nyström say from the living room. Justus got up from the kitchen table and stood in the doorway.
Were they really not armed? That seemed unlikely, but not completely illogical. If they were arrested on the way, possession of weapons was not good advertising.
“There’s no hurry,” Give answered after a moment, as if he needed to consider the decision very carefully.
Erland Edman gave Justus a quick glance, then looked at the unwieldly backpack by his feet, and again looked at his old friend. What did he mean? Did he have a gun in the backpack?
“No knives,” Nyström had said, that was ridiculous. Would he throw knives at three men? Was it possible to barricade himself in the kitchen? If he pushed a chair under the doorknob and overturned the refrigerator and freezer against the door it might work, but it would take more time than he had. He thought through the strategy: Pull out a chair, quickly shut the door and push the chair against it, jump up on the kitchen counter and overturn the fridge. And then call 112.
“I feel naked without weapons,” said Nyström.
“I need to eat something,” said Justus.
Give sat with closed eyes leaning back on the sofa. Justus would throw it out later, if there was a later. Give nodded.
Justus opened the refrigerator, pretending to inspect what was there, tried with his hand on the door to carefully tip the fridge toward him. It didn’t move. But if he were to get up on the counter and take hold highest up on the back it should be a different matter. He took out the egg carton, looked around before he let the bottle of Hof follow. He needed a beer, preferably a couple, three. The three of them sat silently in the living room. He could feel their rising tension. Now was when they would start wondering.
He opened the beer with the ring pull on his right middle finger. He had inherited this from Lennart. Berit had always thought it was gangster style, but how many times hadn’t he had use for it? He took a couple of sips.
“That sounds good,” said Give. “But if you think you can drink us under the table you’re wrong.”
Justus answered with a belch and took out the frying pan and utensils for an omelet. Dinner often ended up being a quick egg dish. Once they’d stayed at a hotel, it was in Gothenburg in connection with a cichlid fair, and Justus would always remember Little John’s delight at the breakfast including bacon and scrambled eggs. Berit had hardly eaten a
nything at all. Maybe she was ashamed of helping herself. Eating uninhibitedly was a sign of being lower class, she’d always thought. Bullshit, Little John had always asserted; “It’s important to eat while it’s there” was his motto.
He returned to the door. “Do you want any, Smulan?” He did not look at Erland at all but instead stared at the backpack to get confirmation that there really were guns in it. Erland Edman nodded, but then said no to the omelet. Hard to interpret, but it leaned toward a yes to weapons and a definite no to the omelet.
The question was whether he was prepared to make use of it? Justus whisked four eggs with a little salt. He was not really hungry, it was all theater, all to have something to do with his hands.
“Are you a patriot?” said Give.
“I don’t really know what you mean,” Justus replied. “But I suppose I am.” He didn’t want any political talk. Give had gotten up and was suddenly standing in the doorway.
“Then you understand what the struggle is about.”
Justus nodded. The TV came on in the living room. It was a news broadcast, Justus realized that without seeing any picture. The reporter’s excited voice cut through the apartment. “It is now confirmed that the policeman who was wounded in an exchange of gunfire outside Gimo in north Uppland has died from his injuries. In a press release…”
“What the hell!” he heard Nyström say. “The SWAT team is in Uppsala, do you see?”
“Damn it,” said Smulan, sounding more terrified than convincing.
I guess I understood that, thought Justus, that Lindell woman is smart. He felt a mixture of pride and fear. He had managed to get out a message, a call for help, but that also involved danger.
Nyström stepped up to the window, stood behind the curtain and peered out, and saw what Justus had already noticed.
The Night of the Fire Page 36