They waited. Had Andreas really driven to Hamra? And in that case, why? Sammy stood up again, wanted to stretch his legs, actually wanted to set off on a fast march.
“That thing with the hammock,” he said. “Is it really a good idea? It gets damned restless.”
“You’re the one who’s restless, not the hammock.”
His cell phone peeped. “Was it one like this?” He held out the screen in front of Ann.
Ann studied the picture that Therese had taken of her car. “Think so.”
“Think so,” Sammy repeated. “Maybe better to bring the car here, so you can see it in the environment and at the right distance.”
“Maybe so,” said Ann in an unusually defensive tone.
“Should I bring in Andreas and question him again?”
“You smell different. Is it her shampoo? Is she good for you?”
Sammy did not answer immediately, gave Ann a quick look as if to check how much room there was for waffling. “What do you mean by good? No, maybe not, to be honest. But you know how it is.”
“No, you’ll have to tell me how everything is. The only thing I know is that it’s not that smart to sleep with a witness in a homicide case.”
“One time,” said Sammy. You weren’t always that smart either, he thought, with some bitterness in his mouth. How many times hadn’t he cleaned up after Lindell’s drunken maneuvers, protected and defended her?
“So many dead,” she said, and he understood that she meant Hökarängen. They looked at one another. He understood that it was her signal that the criticism would not be more extensive. Not after one time. Not today.
“So many dead,” he repeated. It was dizzying, he was involved in the investigation of the worst act of violence in the country’s history, and he was the one who could help solve it all. There was no time to rock in a hammock in the country and chew the fat with an old colleague, and there was definitely no time for personal travails.
“I’ll let Tilltorp go today,” he said, but corrected himself immediately. “I’m just going to check one thing.”
* * *
Nils Enar Andersson seemed to have been waiting for him. Sammy parked the car beside a rusty Mazda 323, which did not appear to have moved recently.
“You’re from the police,” the old man commented immediately. Coke-bottle glasses, Bodin had said, and it was true. Through the lenses Nils Enar’s eyes were unnaturally enlarged, which gave an almost surrealistic impression to meet his gaze, as if he were a lizard from outer space.
He was properly dressed in a pair of polyester trousers, white shirt, and a striped vest that had been around a few years. Sammy thought that perhaps he was going to church.
“That’s right,” said Sammy. “I was in the neighborhood. My colleague talked with you about Lovisa Friman, and now it’s clear that she was the one who perished in the fire.”
“Poor girl” was Andersson’s brief comment.
“And Mattsson’s boy,” Sammy added.
“Yes, he lost his life too.”
“Did you know Daniel?”
Andersson hummed. “I’ve seen him grow up. He got what he deserved. They say that he was a Nazi, but he was really not a bad person. He became one. It’s as though the world is upside down.”
He fell silent, and Sammy found it good to wait.
“I was at the farm for over forty years. The one crazier than the other, mostly the old man, Albin that is, Mattsson’s father. But it was work as good as any, and I did my job.”
Sammy wished that he had Bodin’s insights about farming, but discovered that he didn’t need to say much, the old man was self-propelled. He talked about how he started as an animal tender, and ended as a jack-of-all-trades, the final years the only employee. “Then the boys grew up, and I retired. That was fifteen years ago.”
“And now, what do you think is happening?”
“I don’t give a damn,” Andersson said frankly.
“You’re right in that,” said Sammy.
“Yes, what should I do, a mossy old man, what should I say? Everything’s upside down. And the school burned, I went there in the fifties, not because I got so much wiser, but I learned to read, that was the most important. You have to be able to read, without words you’re lost. I read a lot.” He pointed at the piece of furniture that was set up outside the veranda; on the table was a book. Sammy understood that he’d been sitting there reading and stood up when he heard the car.
“There is one thing,” said Nils Enar Andersson. “Something I’ve been wondering about. That night.”
Sammy waited for him to continue, and it took some time. “I’ll take the book inside, it might rain.”
“What are you reading?”
“About war. I only read about war these days.”
The old man picked up the book and went inside. Maybe he needed to think a little. Sammy wondered which night he meant; there were probably only two alternatives, New Year’s night or the night when the smithy burned.
“You never know,” he said when he returned, making a vague gesture toward the clear blue sky.
“Which night?”
“He’s old now and barely wants to move, lies down most of the time, but he heard something, Bronco that is, and barked. We’ve been comrades for fifteen years and I understood that it was something important, something unusual, something extraordinary, if one may say so.”
Nils Enar fixed his eyes on Sammy, as if to check whether he believed the statement. Sammy nodded. “You understand such things,” he said.
“It was cold, but I shuffled out onto the front stoop. He doesn’t care about deer at all, they bleat and hiss sometimes. It was something else, that I understood.”
He pointed toward the road that led up to the neighbor.
“And there was something in the dark. I actually got a little shaky.”
“What was it?”
“It was someone laughing,” said Nils Enar Andersson. “Can you understand? In the middle of the night, dark and raw, cold, and someone is laughing. I knew that the Frimans weren’t here, so of course I started to wonder.”
“Laughing?”
Nils Enar nodded. They observed the road, the old man to recall the memory, Sammy to try to visualize, understand what might have happened. Was the old man mistaken, perhaps it was an animal anyway? He suspected who might have passed by in the dark, but there was nothing to laugh at that night.
“I thought it was a lunatic. I actually loaded the shotgun.”
“It was a boy from Afghanistan,” said Sammy. “He came from the school, ran away from there. Perhaps I shouldn’t tell you this, but you probably need to know. I understand that you’ve wondered.”
“From the school?”
“He’s a cousin of the boy who froze to death in the car. I can’t say more than that.”
The old man digested the information. “Thanks for that,” he said after a while.
“But I don’t think he was laughing. Perhaps he shouted something?”
“It was laughter. Perhaps he was crazy?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Was he the one who set the fire?”
“No, he was a victim of arson. He ran to save himself.”
“That was the damnedest thing. And where is he now? Is he alive?”
“I don’t know,” said Sammy.
“I think he’s dead,” said Nils Enar after a short reflection.
When Sammy left the old animal tender and drove a kilometer or two, he remembered. He stopped the car, got out, and opened the trunk. There it lay, the rabbit he’d bought from Rothe. Dead.
Thirty-Four
“The three wise men,” said Bodin. Nils Stolpe did not look amused. He’s probably not a morning person, Sammy Nilsson thought. Not even the sight of the SWAT team from the capital could noticeably liven him up.
The trio of detective inspectors—Stolpe, who in no way lived up to the title, Bodin, who had brought a thermos, and Sammy—stood a
t a comfortable distance from Björn Rönn’s house, squeezed between bushy clumps of what Bodin had said was blackthorn.
The time was 4:52. The weather was as predicted, clear and a little chilly, but during the day the temperature would approach twenty-five degrees Celsius.
“Strange that there isn’t a dog,” said Bodin. “They should have a dog.”
“They probably don’t hunt,” said Stolpe.
Sammy wanted to move around, but of course it wasn’t possible. Partly because of the bushes that surrounded them, but primarily because the slightest movement could jeopardize the effort. The idea was that the Rönn brothers should be taken by surprise, and so far nothing indicated that they were aware that it was crawling with police around their house.
“Goddam thorns,” said Sammy. He glanced at his watch: 04:53.
“A lovely morning,” said Bodin.
“My God,” Stolpe muttered. He’d been grumpy ever since they met up in Uppsala.
“We can have a cup later,” said Bodin.
“This is not a goddam moose stand,” said Stolpe. Bodin chuckled.
“Did you make sandwiches too?” Sammy asked.
“Now they’re starting to move,” Stolpe whispered. Two dozen police, equipped with bulletproof vests and helmets, advanced crouching in defined positions. They had automatic rifles in their hands. They moved ahead soundlessly, as if, despite the massive impression they gave off, they were hovering over the yard. A few headed for the barrack where the younger brother lived, while the majority aimed for Björn Rönn’s house, all in a coordinated movement.
Sammy could not help thinking that it was impressive, in a frightening way. The choreography was studied, the police were coordinated in the slightest forward movement, and communication was wordless. The threat of violence, deadly if such was required, was inscribed as an obvious part of the scenography. They surrounded the two buildings, they took their positions, everyone had an assigned place.
A half dozen of the police made their way to the front door. No time was lost, the door was forced open without any ado, and the first police stormed into the house. At the same moment a couple of windowpanes were broken and smoke grenades thrown in. “No knocking here,” Sammy Nilsson whispered.
Everything then happened very quickly. The police streamed in with gas masks as protection against the smoke. Very soon Björn Rönn was dragged out coughing, in his underwear. The house was secured. Everything was over in a minute. All the same it felt like an anticlimax, as if the whole thing were a rehearsal.
The arrestee stood completely still with his hands behind his back, guarded by two policemen and a dog. He stared down at the ground, coughed a few times. Stolpe and Bodin stumbled out of the thicket while Sammy hesitated and stayed behind. The dominant feeling was not relief, but shame, as if he’d violated Björn Rönn’s rights. That was wrong, very wrong, he knew that; it was highly probable that Rönn was involved in the theft of explosives at his workplace. Whether he’d had knowledge of, or was even involved in, the massacre in Hökarängen was less certain, but regardless the crime was such that finesse and kid gloves could be set aside, a few windowpanes had to be broken. Rönn was, or had been, a member of a neo-Nazi organization, which had hate and threats of violence on the program. Then you had to count on a punch in the jaw.
Sammy finally followed his colleagues and went up to Rönn, who gave him a quick look. “You had your chance yesterday. To talk, I mean,” said Sammy. Rönn paid no attention.
“Were you involved in Hökarängen?”
Rönn shook his head. Sammy sighed deeply. He registered that Rönn had similar underwear as his brother, blue with yellow hearts.
“Where’s Rasmus?”
Rönn shrugged and looked around, as if he was saying goodbye to the farm. “He’s gone on vacation,” he said after a while, but by then Sammy had already lost interest in the brother. He observed Rönn, who was standing with bowed head. It looked like he was steeling himself against the morning chill. He’ll get at least two years, thought Sammy, maybe even up to ten, depending on the degree of prior knowledge and collaboration. Life sentence, if he’s been active in setting out the bomb.
A gust of wind blew in between the houses, bringing with it a smell of bark and resin. Who would use all the wood that had been collected?
“Unnecessary, huh?” said Sammy, and gave the foreman Björn Rönn one last look before he walked toward the car. Stolpe, Bodin, and the colleagues from Stockholm could take care of it all. My God, he thought, to wrap this up.
Once at the car, he hadn’t said a word to his colleagues, he was angry at himself: Feeling sorry for a Nazi, that was probably the lowest anyway! Then it occurred to him what it was. It wasn’t Björn Rönn he felt sorry for, it was his mother, sick with cancer, who was haunting him in his mind. He could picture her, in a sickbed at oncology at Uppsala University Hospital.
Laughter was heard from a group of SWAT police who were standing by a black van. They were probably relieved, the mission was completed without complications. Now they could pack up, drive back to Stockholm, stow away their equipment. Call it an evening, as Sammy’s father had said. There was something extremely artificial about their figures, cinematic maybe, as if they put on different roles. It was probably the uniforms, the equipment and the purely physical aspect, as if they were taken from a comic book or computer game. They stuck together, they were compelled, it was in the nature of their mission; if one responded, everyone responded, if one laughed, then they probably all laughed.
Sammy observed them for a few seconds, did not want to stare, did not want them to think that he was overwhelmed by their performance. By necessity they were cast in the same mold, and therefore dangerous, it occurred to him. Effective, but dangerous. When he and Bodin responded it happened at a slow pace, in haste perhaps at times, but unsynchronized and spontaneous, their feet stumbling a little as it were. He smiled to himself. He had never been a commando, and naturally never would be either. “Cheese,” he said, out loud and clearly. One of them looked up. Sammy nodded toward him and mumbled a “thanks for the help,” then got in the car. Would he get any credit? It was actually his work that led to the raid. Or should Lindell get the credit? He wondered how it went picking up Erland “Smulan” Edman.
His mouth was dry, there hadn’t been any coffee from Bodin’s thermos. Forget about that, forget about Edman, stop by Gränby Center and have a coffee, mix with the crowd, ordinary people, unarmed consumers, go into the liquor store. He looked at his watch; it would be a while before it opened. Probably not until ten. Wonder if Angelika was awake? Was it too late to repair their life together? There was a cottage at the Krabbe family’s farm in Jutland, a kind of gatehouse, where one of the farm laborers lived before, but that he and Angelika now had use of. They had experienced good times in it, they could be by themselves, shielded from the outside world as the cottage was increasingly bedded in vegetation. It was still clean, not soiled by their endless petty arguments. A fairy-tale castle only for them. He could breeze down there in a day and a half. Should I go on sick leave? I can certainly get time off, I’ve put in so much overtime.
His thoughts were running like lost sheep, bleating dejectedly, as if they’d ended up in the wrong pen. He did not move, just sat there in the car. There was nothing strange about that per se, policemen spend a lot of time in cars.
Then he pictured Rönn again, awkward, maybe scared, maybe cold, just in his underwear, on his way toward his own downfall, a pitiable figure. It was an image that would return in his mind, he understood that. He’d seen something similar, maybe it was a photo from the Norrmalmstorg drama in 1973, when the perpetrator, what was his name now, Olsson? was led away from the bank he’d tried to rob. Or was he recalling a documentary on TV? Then it struck him. It was a picture from the extermination camps of the Second World War he’d seen once many years ago. A liberated man, but dressed in a single rag, a kind of bodice that went down to the knees, skinny and miserable, Po
land, early spring 1945. A group of Soviet soldiers in the background.
The pictures changed, the contexts likewise. A Jew in a death camp, a neo-Nazi in his yard. He struck the steering wheel with one hand. “That’s good,” he said to himself. What that was he didn’t want to dwell on at the moment, but he knew inside that the contact he’d made with Björn Rönn was true, but dishonest.
He put the car in first and drove away. After a couple of hundred meters there was a car from Swedish Television parked on the side of the road. If he wanted to put himself in the spotlight, to get attention and credit, he could stop, get out, and give the journalists exactly what they wanted. Such a segment, with connection to Hökarängen, would definitely be shown on national television, perhaps even in other countries. He slowed down, rolled ahead, stopped. Perhaps Angelika would see me on TV, perhaps our daughter? I could not care less what Ann says. I could not care less what Bodin and Stolpe say too.
“Hi, are you looking for…”
“You’re a police officer, right? This concerns a connection to Hökarängen, right?”
The journalist, a young woman, looked eager to say the least. Calm down, he thought.
“My name is Sammy Nilsson, with the Uppsala police, and I can give you some info, maybe not everything, but enough that it will be good, but we have to do it here. It’s cordoned off farther ahead and I have to leave. Then you can drive up and film the barricades if you want.”
“Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath and signaling to the cameraman to leave the vehicle. She smiled to herself, and Sammy was forced to hide his own smile at his whorish behavior.
Thirty-Five
“Are you Andreas Mattsson’s biological father?”
Bertil Efraimsson observed her with an amused expression, but there was no mistaking either that he signaled danger and vigilance. No one in the village can beat him at arm wrestling, it occurred to Ann Lindell, an unmotivated but completely understandable reflection.
The Night of the Fire: A Mystery Page 23