“Hi there!”
They turned around.
“I heard about your friend. Terrible. And then the girl who burned inside.”
“What do you have to do with it?” Sanberg said after a moment of reflection.
“You mean that I’m an old lady who should stop snooping?”
“He was our friend, not yours. You don’t have that many here. On the contrary, you’re despised in the village.”
She got the impulse to storm onto the property, but the time was past when she could force gates and doors by waving a badge.
“What do you want?” said Ottosson.
“We all know that Daniel was involved,” she said, nodding toward the school property. “And that there were two more who were there and set the fire … and that time is running out for the arsonists. But you understand that too.”
The triumphant smile she tried to put on more or less came across. She resumed her march toward the cheese. What am I doing, she thought, a little shameful, but the fury at their arrogance and mocking grins took over. I’ll put them away, that will end the sneering.
On the internet she’d found the Rönn brothers, not unexpectedly friends on Facebook. There were also Justus’s buddy Erland “Smulan” Edman, Lovisa Friman, Daniel Mattsson, and some of the others who had been at the New Year’s party, including Sanberg, but not Ottosson. A picture was emerging of a racist bloc, and the tendency of their posts was clear: They were about refugees, how they were ruining Sweden, consuming our common resources, and threatening the country’s survival. There were many Swedish flags, incitement against unaccompanied youths, obvious lies about the increased number of murders in Sweden, that soon all women would be forced to wear veils, so as not to “insult the Muslims,” and that it was forbidden to sing the national anthem and celebrate Lucia. Altogether it made for tiresome and gloomy reading. How do they manage, it struck Ann, how can they bear to put such energy into hate, how do they manage to be so stupid? Rasmus Rönn was an active member of several groups, including “National Left,” apparently a collection of wackos, and “Stand Up for Katerina Janouch.” Who she was Ann didn’t care to find out, there were too many crazies.
She turned around and observed the collection of buildings, the village center you might well say, even if the store was closed, the garage likewise, the school burned down, and the houses dominated by those over sixty. The flaking silo at Hamra farm stood like an exclamation mark over the edge of the forest, or rather like a memorial over a livestock farm that had capsized and was about to go under.
As a child she had driven around with her father in a then still living countryside in Östergötland, when he delivered soft drinks and beer to country merchants, gas stations, and scattered restaurants. It was not until she moved to Tilltorp that she understood what those outings with her father meant. Then the memories floated up: the gravel roads, the excitement she felt before what was hiding behind the crown of the hill or at the end of the next curve; a cottage, a barn, an ICAnder sign, a GB clown at a gas station; out of the forest, across the fields, tractors and threshers, her father knew them all—John Deere, New Holland, Zetor, Case, she remembered how he rattled them off, and she could still name most of the models at a distance; people standing on front stoops and sitting on garden chairs, digging in the soil or picking cherries.
Now she was there again, in the countryside, on the periphery, but a lot had happened in forty years. “Soil.” “Cultivation.” “Milk.” Those were words that came to her. She understood that the neo-Nazis were fishing in these waters. The dream of the idyll, the pure Sweden, with haymaking and hayracks, a functioning countryside with social and commercial service worth the name, the secure Sweden, the Sweden that was irrevocably gone.
It was just before eight when she got to work. Everything was as usual. The company car was parked at the door, a new delivery of cheese was in progress. Anton’s bike was propped against the wall. The man himself was standing by the waste container enjoying a smoke. He smoked two cigarettes a day, one in the morning and one when he left work. Never at home, as his wife suffered from COPD.
Ann felt a wave of fondness at the sight of the simple and truly ugly shed that was her workplace. This is good, she thought as she opened the door and the tart, raw odor of cheese struck her. It was not the first time she’d had that feeling. Could she tell Matilda about Edvard? Maybe she already knew, or in any event suspected, because if she’d driven past last evening she would have noticed his truck. No, I’ll keep up appearances, she decided, when it struck her that perhaps it was both the first and the last time he would spend the night. A one-night stand. He hadn’t said anything, not even “See you later.” It was a chilling thought, which in one stroke swept away all the warm thoughts, a terror scenario that forced her to take a deep breath.
Otherwise she could talk about everything with Matilda, but there was one thing she hadn’t mentioned, and that was the badger in the bed, even though she thought about it every day. That was an act that soiled not only her home, but the whole village and its inhabitants. She understood for the first time the feeling that crime victims tried to explain to her before: impotence and degradation, mixed with fury and a kind of disconsolation at people’s desire to harm others. She suspected Sanberg and Ottosson, felt that she’d seen it in their faces and posture, a mixture of cautious fear and contempt.
She thought about Ottosson, who had now taken over the house and a piece of land, about his dream of raising goats, which Matilda had told her about. Couldn’t he become a nice goat farmer, Ann Lindell thought a bit childishly, couldn’t he live in peace with his surroundings? He himself would feel better, even the goats would graze more harmoniously, be enticed to more generously give up their milk. She thought that deep down he was a good young man, she didn’t know why, because nothing she had seen so far gave her any reason to believe that. Perhaps she was fooled by his surname, which was the same as her boss at Violent Crimes when she started at the Uppsala police. The man who had been niceness personified.
It struck her that she’d made a mistake. Instead of harping about the school fire, she should have congratulated Sebastian Ottosson on the house and the fact that he was renovating it.
“What an amazing spring!” Anton shouted before he slipped in through the far door. How you carry on about the weather, old man, she thought. Cycle home and take care of your wife who is gasping for air in the heat.
Twenty-Five
He caught him in bed, or almost. A sleepy Rasmus Rönn answered the door in a pair of sky-blue boxer shorts with yellow hearts.
“Rasmus?”
“Who the hell are you?”
Sammy introduced himself. “We’ve met. You remember the first day of the year?”
“What do you want? I don’t know anything.”
“You’ve heard that there was another fire?”
“I have to pee.”
“Do that,” said Sammy.
There was a musty smell of unwashed clothes and cigarette butts in the little cabin, which mostly resembled an enlarged garden shed. Sammy chose to turn his back to study the surroundings. Some twenty meters away was another house of a more traditional seventies cut, perhaps the home of his brother Björn.
Rasmus Rönn returned. “Nice undies,” said Sammy. “Where’d you get them?”
He disappeared again, and returned, now dressed in pants and a T-shirt.
“You’re not working?”
“Sick leave.”
“Where do you work otherwise?”
“It’s none of your business.”
“Tell me,” said Sammy.
“About what?”
“What are you going to do with the Austrogel?”
“What the hell is that?”
Sammy had to admit to himself that Rasmus was good at keeping a straight face.
“Ten kilos. Tell me. I have no desire to drive to Almunge and bring in your brother. Not yet anyway.”
Rasmus glared at
him with animosity that would have made anyone hesitant or scared, but on the contrary Sammy was enlivened by tasting a little unmasked hate.
“He lives over there, right?” said Sammy, motioning with his head.
The blow, or more precisely the shove, put him off balance, but by reflexively waving his arms he managed to get hold of the railing and stay on his feet.
“Are you drunk or what?”
Sammy stared at the door that had been slammed in his face. Now there were two alternatives. Either he forced the door and confronted Rasmus or else he called for reinforcements; a patrol car with a few constables would make the whole thing easier. He did neither. Instead he started looking around. He took out his phone, pretended to talk, went over to the house where he thought Björn Rönn lived, felt the door, peeked in through a window, walked around to the back side and stayed there a couple of minutes, sauntered farther to the garage, slipped in between the double doors that were half open, lingered there a moment, went out and continued his performance by pretend-talking on the phone the whole time, and disappeared from Rasmus Rönn’s field of vision as he rounded the garage.
There were piles of mixed wood and in the center was a massive chopping block. He sat down on it. It smelled good. He called Bodin and told him where he was, but nothing else. Bodin was busy trying to reach Lovisa’s parents, who were apparently on a flight home, so he didn’t have time to be curious. Sammy clicked off, looked at the time, 7:22. He thought he could wait up to an hour, but it took only thirty minutes before he heard a car approach. He sat there calmly, picked up the ax that was leaned against the block, weighed it in his hand.
The car, a Toyota with the NCC logo on the trunk, drove all the way up to the woodpiles. Björn Rönn got out, waited a moment before shutting the car door, as if he was thinking about whether he would have to revise the story he’d thought out. Sammy smiled at him.
“Rönn cuts spruce,” he said. “You’re Björn, I understand. Nice that you could come. Will you be done soon? A lot of rock in Almunge, huh?”
“What do you want?”
“You know. Your little brother told you.”
“I don’t know anything about the Austrogel that disappeared.”
“Disappeared? Makes it sound like it was conjured away. ‘Stolen’ is the word.”
“I don’t know how it happened. I’ve explained this to the police. I wasn’t responsible for the blasting, that was a hired firm.”
“But someone must have tipped off the thief, right?”
“Go to hell!”
Björn Rönn showed all the signs of poorly controlled aggression. If he were to get violent Sammy’s chance to assert himself was small. “Nice ax,” he said.
“Put down the ax and get out of here.”
“Gränsfors, those are the best. This is the big model, right?”
“Do you get to behave however you want? Come to folks’ homes, peek through windows … and … make accusations.”
“You in NRM, or whatever you’re part of, probably make home visits too. With or without an ax. So skip the empty chatter, we know your type, what you’re up to. Some of you actually talk with us, maybe they get scared, maybe they reconsider, grow up if one may say so.”
“You’re talking shit!”
“Why did I pick you out, do you think, when there are twenty others at the site to choose from?”
“You need to find a scapegoat. I don’t give a damn that Nyllet is in trouble.”
“Who’s Nyllet?”
“Don’t play dumb. If you don’t find someone on the crew, then Nyllet will go to jail because he’s responsible.”
“Put him aside. Your little brother is involved in burning down schools and you’re going to blow something up. What will it be this time, an organization, a mosque, or what? Tell me what has to be destroyed, how many have to die so that you’ll be happy in this country.”
Björn Rönn stared at him before he turned his eyes away.
“Rasmus was not involved in the fire,” he muttered.
“There are those who say he was.”
“Then they’re lying.”
“We’ll probably have to bring him in.”
Rönn made a motion with his arm, as if he was aiming a blow, but changed his mind at the last moment. Sammy almost wished that Rönn would attack.
“My mother is sick,” said Rönn. “She would be completely crushed…”
“How is she sick?”
“Cancer.”
“I’m sorry. And she’ll be crushed if we bring Rasmus in?”
Björn Rönn struck his hand on the roof of the car.
Sammy leaned the ax against the chopping block. “Do you have your own forest?”
“Yes, on a little waste land. Everything else we sold off when my old man died.”
There was something in Björn Rönn’s behavior, a tone of voice, that Sammy really wanted to build on, but he didn’t quite know how. He sensed that the construction worker, who had become boss for twenty or so others, was far from stupid after all.
“It’s nice here.”
Rönn grunted and looked around.
“It would be a shame to risk it,” Sammy continued.
“What do you mean?”
“If Rasmus goes in for arson and you for theft at the job, who’ll take care of the wood? Who’ll take care of your mother? How will you find a job when you’re released from the pen?”
“I have to get back to work.”
“Okay, but think about it. Here’s my number, when you want to talk, call and tell me where we can find the explosives.”
Björn Rönn took Sammy’s card, inspected it, and put it in his chest pocket.
“Forget about Rasmus. He’s a little stupid right now,” he said and slowly went his way. Once by the car he lingered a second, turned around and observed Sammy.
“How do you think we could live together in peace?”
“By blowing them to bits, maybe,” said Sammy. “Kill everyone.”
“I’m really not a racist,” said Björn Rönn. He looked sincerely mournful at having to say something so obvious.
“How did it start?”
“What’s that?”
“Your hate. I saw what you’ve written on the internet. Did it start here at the woodpile? Who threatens you here, in Rasbo?”
“I have to get to work,” said Rönn and jumped into the car.
* * *
Sammy sat down on the chopping block again and stayed there a long time. The smell of wood, sawdust, and bark made him both dejected and satisfied. It had been a long time since he’d held an ax of such quality. “Hickory,” he said out loud and stood up. By his feet was a troublesome piece of gnarly spruce. He set it on the block, got pitch on his hand, took a step back, seized the ax with both hands, inspected the contrary wood, measured, raised the ax over his head, swung it around in a magnificent arc, and hit the piece with all the force he could muster.
“Nice,” he heard someone say, and he spun around. There stood Rasmus Rönn.
“You have to try,” said Sammy, kicking the half that lay to the right of the chopping block. It would need to be split in at least two more parts. “You’ll have to take the rest,” he said and made a gesture with his hand over the drifts of uncut wood, set down the ax, and continued. “Tell me what happened on New Year’s Eve.”
* * *
At nine o’clock he turned onto the highway. The radio news spoke about opinion poll numbers before the election. The party Sammy voted for, mostly out of old habit, was in trouble, “historic low level,” and he understood very well why.
He turned off the radio, called Angelika, but without real hope that she would answer. “I’m in Skåne, you know where and you know why,” she had in obvious haste jotted down on a slip of paper that he found on the kitchen table. And he knew very well, her damned sister had no doubt made a bed for her in the guest room with the “amazing view.” He hated Mölle. He hated Skåne. Maybe not all of it, but
Mölle. Her damned brother-in-law could be added to that, the amateur psychologist, who hummed and nodded, and then added on with more crap. “You have to find the energy in yourself. Liberation comes from within.”
If the party he’d voted for all those years was struggling with problems, he himself was in at least as much trouble. The woman he’d loved for all these years was foreign to him now. There was only one thing that could make him excited and satisfied. Work. The hunt. He was ashamed of how simple that insight was, but so it was. He’d seen it in colleagues, the symptoms were easily legible: a miserable morning mood, which as the day went on gradually changed to what could be perceived as joy in work, but which was mercilessly broken down the closer you came to the end of the workday. “I’ll stay awhile” was an all-too-common statement.
He was there, shutting the door behind him was freedom. Had he missed her in the morning? No. On the contrary, the silence at the breakfast table was nice.
* * *
The church in Börstil looked as ample as usual, corpulent in an irritating way. He had time to spare, that was the reward for getting up at five o’clock, so he stopped there for the first time. The door was open. He hesitated but did not go in. Church sanctuaries were enticing, but at the same time in some vague way he was afraid of them. He walked for fifteen minutes in the churchyard, making one full round. He was reconciled with Börstil and its annoyingly ample church.
* * *
He knew that Therese Andersson would be at home. “I’m not presentable at work,” she’d said, without explaining why, but when she opened the door Sammy understood what she meant. She looked miserable, swollen around her eyes, flushed, and with a runny nose.
“Pollen,” she said sadly, but smiled.
“Everything is blooming.”
“Without the romance.”
This girl, thought Sammy, is dangerous. They sat down in the kitchen. Pedantic was his next thought, neatness and order, everything in its place. They made small talk about May, everyone was talking about May and the heat. He declined coffee, but regretted it immediately and said yes. Therese fetched two cups and a shiny stainless-steel thermos, took out a plate, set out homemade cookies. He observed her, her posture, the bare shoulders. Shoulders were important to Sammy, he thought it was there that a man could decipher not only a woman’s attitude, but also her character. He was not ashamed of the thoughts that passed through his mind, but would never reveal, not to anyone, what he was thinking. Well, perhaps to Ann. He turned his head and observed the empty chair by his side. When he and Ann had coffee together, back when they were colleagues and perhaps more than that, they always sat next to each other, seldom across from each other. Sammy had a hard time with her gaze.
The Night of the Fire: A Mystery Page 16