The Night of the Fire: A Mystery

by Kjell Eriksson

  People started to take off, but latecomers replaced them, perhaps those who had to work on this amazing party Saturday. In the background, between tender birches and blooming lilacs, Ann glimpsed the blackened chimney on the school property, but there were few or none who registered that, she believed. From having been a visible monument to fire and destruction, perhaps evil and hatred, now the sooty brick had become a part of the village that few took notice of. But if you thought about it all, it was a bit like the old hovel on the long curve, or the junk cars on Edström’s property; the chimney ought to be taken away, it’s an eyesore, people in the village said.

  * * *

  Ann decided to slip away without any ceremony. The greeter, Astrid’s granddaughter, was still standing by the gate to welcome guests and say goodbye.

  “Are you leaving already?”

  “Yes, unfortunately, I have to get going,” said Ann, untruthfully but completely honestly. She didn’t have to do anything, but at the same time she felt compelled.

  “Maybe we’ll meet again,” said Naomi. “After school is out I’m going to help Grandmother with cleaning, ‘death cleaning’ she says, but I think that sounds gruesome. I’ll be here for a week for sure.”

  “Erik, my son, will be here then, maybe you can get together,” said Ann, and suddenly became envious of her youth, her skin, the peach-colored tank top over her shoulders and her young breasts, and the optimism her whole figure radiated. She had to subdue the impulse to lean forward and let her lips touch Naomi’s throat.

  “Grandmother said something about that. She’s probably afraid that I’ll be bored with all the old people here.”

  * * *

  Ann left the partying behind. She didn’t feel particularly intoxicated, but it was as if her vision was partly sidelined, the road and the edge of the ditch were blurry. She was having a quiet late-spring cry. The absence came over her. She stopped abruptly and checked her phone, but there were no messages, no missed calls. I’ll call, she thought, suddenly clear that spring had caught up with and passed her, and that she stood as if nailed to the spot. Soon high summer would come galloping and quickly be over.

  Twenty-Nine

  The message came in while Ann was standing in the screened outdoor shower, which was next to Erik’s cabin. She had it installed so he could take care of himself. Maximum independence was something he appreciated. She loved showering outdoors, the open sky and the sometimes chilly experience reinforced the sense of rural freedom.

  She read it in the hammock. Sammy would stop by. I’m taking a chance that you’re at home, he’d written, and managed to make three typos in that short sentence. A knight in shining armor, she thought, went back in with her wineglass and set it covered in the pantry. A system she used to try to fool herself, but the fact was it did hold down consumption. She gave it one last look and played with the delusive thought that she would forget the glass, smiled to herself, because she knew that the day she forgot wine it would be time for an Alzheimer’s examination.

  Sammy Nilsson came half an hour later, and sat down beside her. “You smell like a party,” he said after a while.

  “Punch.”

  “Punch, it’s been a while,” he said.

  Sammy had many faces, and over the years she’d seen them all, but the expression he showed now was new. He looked wounded, as if he was unhappy about not being able to be there and party and drink punch. It was an expression that didn’t suit him. Ann understood that it was about his relationship with Angelika, perhaps the solitude that he’d been forced into for a few days. Then it’s easy to take to punch, she knew all about that.

  She chose not to ask about the situation on the home front; if he wanted to talk, he would.

  “I’ve got photos of some of the country youth,” he said, “if Rothe is eager to identify any of them.”

  “I told you to drop the dove story.”

  “I want to get Rothe to talk.”

  “You want to talk doves, so he’ll start to like you.”

  “Something like that. If he points out Sanberg, maybe Ottosson, then I have a reason to go after them.”

  “Two arsons and at least one homicide, and you’re going to investigate the theft of a dove, well thought out,” said Ann, mostly to provoke, because she understood his tactic well.

  “At least one? Have you heard something in the village?”

  “The refugee kid who disappeared, maybe he was killed and disposed of. In this village anything can happen. No, no one has said anything.”

  Sammy grimaced and shook his head.

  “Daniel Mattsson, Sanberg, and then a third one, who is that?”

  “Ottosson, the future goat farmer,” said Ann.

  The discussion slowed down, and they fell silent.

  “Have you talked any more with Andreas and his girlfriend?”

  “I thought about going to Östhammar later today.”

  “How does she seem?”

  “Credible,” said Sammy.

  “Is she good-looking?”

  Sammy sat with his head tipped back, as if he wanted to take a nap, but opened his eyes and peeked at her. “Good-looking,” he said and quickly got to his feet.

  “How old?”

  “She’s older than Andreas, closer to forty, I would think.”

  “And you’re going there on a Saturday evening.”

  “She was the one who called me.”

  “Jesus. What does she want?”

  Now was when something more might be said, but Sammy held back. “Talk,” he simply said. He stood turned away with his head lowered, his hands in his pockets. “I’m heading for the rabbit man.”

  “Can’t you stay and tell me a little?”

  “Don’t have time,” said Sammy, and Ann felt a stab of something that could be interpreted any number of ways. Perhaps jealousy, but did she begrudge him some flirtation in Östhammar?

  “I think she wants a divorce. Angelika, that is. I think she’s met someone.”

  “Is it that bad?”

  “Snow-in-summer is pretty,” he said, pointing toward a stone fence surrounded by white flowers.

  “The things you know.”

  “Too bad it stops flowering so fast” was Sammy’s parting line.

  He nodded and went his way. Sneaked away. Ann understood. He didn’t want to empty out his grief before her. And even more, he was sensitive enough not to talk about infidelity, and what that could lead to. He had followed her journey from close up after all.

  * * *

  She went inside to get the wineglass and returned to the hammock. The thoughts of Naomi, the girl by the gate, returned unbidden. There was something there, youth, her obvious openness, innocence many would say. She stood out as innocent, naïve even. Naturally, she was a teenager, and what did Ann have to do with it? Should she be in a constant state of jealousy about everything and everyone? But the fact was that she felt a kind of longing for the young girl, her downy neck and small ears. And then the smile, which promised to overturn everything musty and enclosed.

  At the birthday party, surrounded by the old people of the village, Ann could feel relatively young, but that feeling collapsed like a soufflé at the encounter with Naomi. That was why she’d wanted to lean forward and sip her youth, draw off a drop, a scent.

  * * *

  The narrow, winding gravel road that led up to Sam Rothe’s house and animal-breeding operation followed the edge of forest and meadow, with open pastures and small fields on the other side. There were no other houses, and the only sign of life was grazing sheep. A single blue sign for a turnout, which looked misplaced, because how often would you encounter anyone, but it was evidence anyway that there was a kind of consideration in an otherwise desolate part of Uppland.

  In another time perhaps Sammy Nilsson would have stopped, gotten out of the car, and enjoyed spring more directly, but now it was with a sense of suppressed desperation that he observed the pastoral views. Unconsciously he started driving
slower and slower, and it was only when he glimpsed Rothe’s barn that the paralysis eased up somewhat.

  Rothe was standing in the farmyard, he must have heard the car coming. It was to some extent a different person who met Sammy this time. He extended a hand and looked Sammy in the eyes, which hadn’t happened before.

  “Was she happy?” he asked. It took a moment for Sammy before he understood that Rothe meant the fictional young girl for whom Sammy claimed to have bought the rabbit.

  “Of course!” he confirmed. The rabbit was still in its box, loaded in the trunk of the car. Sammy had completely forgotten the critter. “She was really happy.”

  “Yes, all children need something soft,” said Rothe.

  “I’ve brought some photos with me. Maybe you’d like to look and see if you recognize anyone who was here and stole your animals.”

  Rothe slowly browsed through the dozen photos that Sammy handed over. “The French guy isn’t here,” he said. “But him and him were involved.” He pointed, not completely unexpectedly, at the pictures of Stefan Sanberg and Sebastian Ottosson. “I recognize a few more, but they weren’t involved.”

  He spoke without hesitating, without his gaze wandering, gave back the photos, and then said something that Sammy didn’t really understand. “They’re murderers.”

  “Do you mean…”

  “I mean the school,” said Rothe.

  “Do you know? Did you see it with your own eyes?”

  “Stefan bragged about it.”

  Sammy put the pictures in a folder while he thought about how he could go further. This was as close to the crime and the perpetrators as they’d come so far.

  “When was that?”

  “When he was here, and once in the house. It was when Lovisa had come home and they were partying. I came to … I didn’t know that Lovisa had come home.”

  “And Omid was still in the cellar?”

  Sam Rothe looked down at the ground, and nodded at last.

  “You came there to give Omid food, or something?”

  “You know his name?”

  “Everyone has a name, and I remember his,” said Sammy. “We’ve wondered where he went. Some believed he froze to death in the forest and was eaten up by wolves and lynx.”

  “Ridiculous,” said Rothe, smiling for the first time.

  “Where did he go then? He couldn’t very well keep living in the house when Lovisa showed up?”

  “I don’t know. He was just gone.”

  Sammy put his hand on Rothe’s shoulder. “You did the right thing,” he said. “He really needed help. He couldn’t come here?”

  Rothe shook his head.

  “He was never here to visit?”

  “No, he didn’t dare walk on the roads, and the road through the forest doesn’t work in the winter.”

  “He didn’t say anything about where he might think about going? He didn’t mention any friends, any town?”

  “He talked about some people he knew in Gävle, but he didn’t know where they were.”

  “Did he know what happened to his cousin?”

  “He asked and I had to tell him. I lied at first, but he understood, and I had to.”

  “What else did Stefan say about the fire? There were two others who set it, did he say who?”

  “Daniel was involved.”

  “Sebastian Ottosson too?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s okay,” said Sammy. “I have to get going, but don’t say anything about this to anyone else.”

  Rothe nodded, but his facial expression had taken on the fear and oppression that dominated him before.

  “It was good that you talked with me. Thanks.”

  They shook hands. Sammy felt solemn in some unfamiliar way. He walked slowly back to the car, suddenly uncertain whether it was right to go to Therese in Östhammar. Maybe he ought to stay awhile with the rabbit man. He turned around, gave a thumbs-up, but he would have liked to have done something more, or rather: said something more. What he’d seen was a remarkable change in a young, oppressed man. It was as if Sam Rothe had grown several inches before his eyes. He’d spoken out, admittedly in a quiet way, but nonetheless with a clear purpose. The question was whether he would be able to testify, repeat those two names.

  Thirty

  It was a flea market Saturday in Hökarängen town center, and uncommonly lively on Peppartorget. The explosion occurred at 4:10 P.M. A boy, who would be starting first grade in August and who had spent a lot of time riding back and forth on his new bicycle, died immediately when he was slung into the low wall that surrounded the square. An elderly couple, who had lived on Tobaksvägen since 1952, were both conscious as Henny bled to death before her husband’s eyes. The man was seriously wounded, with fragment injuries in the abdomen and right arm, but would, against his will he later maintained, survive. Never could John Einar Gulbrandsen have imagined such an end for his wife.

  After the explosion absolute silence prevailed for a moment, before wailing and screams filled the square. This happened on a daily basis in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq, but not in Hökarängen. Until this sunny Saturday afternoon in May.

  Six persons killed immediately and twenty wounded, one of whom died after a few hours, was the outcome of the worst terrorist attack in Swedish history. A success, thought Frank Give, who monitored it all from Hökis restaurant a hundred-some meters away. Maximum destruction was maximum confusion and terror, and therefore maximum success.

  The phone buzzed in his hand. It was Lena: “What was it that exploded?” was her question. “Some darky set off a bomb on the square,” he answered.

  That was also the version he later told the reporters who came to the scene. Give made sure to be witness number one, the one who’d seen the whole course of events, and could describe how two men, right after the explosion, ran from the square in the direction of Fagersjövägen. He stood calmly before the cameras and microphones, recounting factually and in detail what had happened.

  This was an observation that no one else could confirm, but was the image that came to mark the reporting the first few hours. Two men, two dark-skinned men, two young dark-skinned men, who leave the crime scene running. That was the term he used, “the crime scene.” “It was like in Kabul,” he said to make an international association, but was careful to appear collected, and endlessly sad. “I think about all the fine Hökarängen residents who died, my neighbors, what have they done wrong? Isn’t it enough now?”

  It was a performance as good as any.

  Thirty-One

  On the bumpy road it was just as slow driving back, and it wasn’t until the straightaway before Tilltorp that he picked up speed a little, and once out on the county road returned to his usual driving style.

  It was a Saturday at the end of May and it was noticeable. People were out in their gardens, he saw grills being lit, a badminton net being tested, a party tent set up in Hökhuvud, children playing soccer on the greenest of all grass. It was unusually warm, almost continental. It promised to be a fine evening. The Swedes came to life. Sammy likewise, tense about meeting Therese, mainly a witness in a homicide investigation, but also something more, he was uncertain what.

  Therese met him on the stairs, as if she’d been standing there since his last visit. The swelling in her face had gone down, maybe medication had helped. “Nice that you could come,” she said. “Shall we sit outside?”

  Sammy thought about Ann and her hammock, but there was no such thing here. They rounded the cottage to a traditional piece of garden furniture, painted green with lots of laths. They drank white wine. Therese hadn’t even asked what he wanted, if wine was okay, but instead resolutely poured a glistening golden liquid in two glasses and set the bottle in the wine cooler on the table. Maybe a bit too sweet for his taste, but it was good anyway, refreshing and promising, that perhaps it would be a good summer. Despite everything.

  * * *

  It felt like he was taking back some of what he’
d lost the last few weeks. The dissatisfaction he’d felt, the anger that had built up, was scattered. The thought of Angelika subsided, in reality hardly existed at all, more like an irritating insect that was buzzing in one ear. She had deserted her home and was no doubt drinking her wine with a view of the sea, together with her tight-assed sister and their mother, in her blindingly white pantsuit, a garment that he’d always associated with upper-class old ladies.

  Therese was no old lady! Her parents came from Gräsö, and Sammy could not keep from laughing. “Then they know Edvard,” he said, “and they must have known Viola, an amazing old woman.” Suddenly Edvard was an ally in the struggle against the Mölle mafia and all sorts of misery. He took a sip of wine. I should eat something, he thought.

  She looked at him with surprise, an expression that after a moment changed to amusement. “Naturally,” she said, “I don’t really know, but of course they probably do. I know who Edvard is.”

  He told her about Ann and Edvard, mentioned things that not even Angelika had heard, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Therese observed him as if she took him seriously.

  “I’m hungry,” he said just like that.

  “Shall we grill?”

  She made it sound like “Shall we go to bed?” in his ears anyway. He set the wineglass down and looked at her. What is going on?

  “Let’s grill,” he said.

  “The au gratin potatoes are already done.”

  “I love au gratin potatoes.”

  “It’s a gas grill. Just one thing: Turn off your phone.”

  Sammy obeyed.

  She went to get the meat to grill, entrecôte from Lövsta, it turned out. He put his index finger on the meat, room temperature. I want to grill with this lady, he thought while he investigated how to work the propane grill, the size of a small aircraft carrier.