The princess of Burundi

by Kjell Eriksson

  Beatrice swallowed. She saw Little John’s battered, beaten, and burned body, in her mind’s eye, dumped in a bank of snow that was dirty from the city’s streets.

  Berit shook her head, gently at first, almost imperceptibly, then more forcefully. She opened her mouth very slowly and a strand of saliva ran out of the corner of her mouth. Beatrice’s words were taking root, burrowing into her consciousness. She stiffened, not moving a muscle, unreachable during the time that the message about her John sank in, that he was never going to come home again, never hug her, never walk into the kitchen, never do anything again.

  She made no resistance when Beatrice put her arms around her shoulders, led her away to the chair by the window, and sat down across from her. She caught herself quickly taking note of what was on the table: an azalea that needed water and was starting to wilt, the morning paper, an Advent candleholder with three candles that had burned halfway to the bottom, and—farthest in by the wall—a knife and fork crossed over an empty plate.

  Beatrice leaned in across the table and grabbed Berit’s hand again and gave it a squeeze. Then came a single tear that traced its way down her cheek.

  “Can we call anyone?”

  Berit turned her face toward Beatrice, meeting her gaze.

  “How?” she asked hoarsely, in a whisper.

  “He was murdered,” Beatrice said in a low voice, as if she were adjusting the volume to match Berit’s.

  The look she got reminded her of a sheep slaughter she had witnessed as a child. The victim was a female sheep. The animal was taken from the pen, braying, and led out into the yard. She was wild but let herself be calmed by Beatrice’s uncle.

  It was the look the sheep gave Beatrice at that moment, that tenth of a second before it happened. The white of the eye glimmered, the expression full of hurt, no suggestion of fear, more as if posing a question. It was as if there weren’t room enough in the world for her despair, although the pen was so spacious, the pastures so rich.

  “Murdered,” Berit mumbled.

  “Can we call anyone? Do you have any siblings?”

  Berit shook her head.

  “Parents?”

  Another shake.

  “Justus,” she said. “I have to get a hold of Justus.”

  “Where is he?”

  “At Danne’s.”

  “Close by?”

  “Salabacksgatan.”

  I can’t do this, Beatrice thought, but she knew at the same time that as far as she was concerned, the worst was over. The words had been said. She would do everything she could to assuage the woman’s pain and give her the answers she was looking for. A feeling of reverence gripped her. It was a feeling familiar to her from before. Beatrice was far from religious, but she could sense what people sought in the religious messages and rituals. There was so much in her police work that intersected with the big questions, myths, and dreams.

  She had noticed that the police often had to play the role of confessional priests, people to whom one could unburden oneself. Even the uniformed police officer, who technically represented authority, power, and the bad conscience of the citizen, could receive these confidences. That had been her experience on the beat. Or was it her personality that had invited these many instances of quiet, breathtaking intimacy? She didn’t know, but she cherished these moments. She had told herself she would never become cynical.

  The front door was suddenly thrown open.

  “Justus,” Berit gasped.

  But it was a man who rushed into the kitchen. He caught sight of Beatrice and halted abruptly.

  “Are you a minister or something?”

  “No,” Beatrice said and stood up.

  The man was panting, his gaze aggressive.

  “Who the hell are you, then?”

  “A police officer.”

  “They’ve killed my brother.”

  He waved his right arm in front of Beatrice.

  “Lennart,” Berit whispered.

  He stopped short in his fierce attack, looking at her as if he had only at that moment registered her presence. He lowered his arms and his whole body deflated like a balloon pierced with a needle.

  “Berit,” he said and took a step toward her.

  “Bastard,” she said and spat in his face.

  He took her outburst with calm, wiping his face with his sleeve. Beatrice glimpsed a tear under the arm of his jacket where the bloodred lining peeked out.

  “Was that really necessary?” he asked, and Beatrice could read only confusion and grief in his face.

  “It was your fault,” Berit said with teeth so tightly clenched that it was hard to understand how she could utter any sounds, let alone speak. Her voice shot up into a falsetto register. “It’s your fucking fault my John is dead! You always dragged him into your shit. Always you!”

  Lennart shook his head. His face was lined and black stubble covered a surprising amount of it. Beatrice would never have been able to guess that the man in front of her had been Little John’s brother.

  “I don’t know anything about this,” he said. “I promise.”

  Beatrice decided spontaneously to believe him.

  “How did you find out that your brother was dead?”

  “Your blabbering friends,” he said curtly and looked away. “The whole town knows,” he continued, turned to the window. “If you start shouting over the police radio that Little John is dead, then everyone will hear it.”

  Unbelievable, Beatrice thought. The name of a murdered person announced unscrambled on the radio.

  “My brother, my little brother,” Lennart Jonsson sobbed, leaned up against the windowsill, his face pressed against the pane.

  “I’m going to kill those bastards, you know. I’m going to find the one who did this and torture him to death.”

  Beatrice wondered what details of the murder had also been broadcast. Berit had sunk down on the chair again and sat lifelessly with her gaze fixed on some place where Beatrice was unable to follow.

  “Will you be staying with her for a bit?” she asked. “She could do with the company.”

  It was hard to know if her brother-in-law was the best companion for her, but Beatrice told herself there was a logic to it. A brother and a wife, linked for always with their shared life, the memories, grief.

  Lennart turned and nodded in a conciliatory manner. A drop of Berit’s saliva was still caught on his stubbly chin.

  She got the address of Justus’s friend and that of John and Lennart’s mother, went out into the hall, and called Haver and told him to make sure the mother was notified.

  Lennart was downing a beer when she returned to the kitchen. Maybe just the thing, she thought.

  “Berit,” she said, “do you know where John was going last night?”

  Berit shook her head.

  “Was he running an errand? Was there someone he was going to meet?”

  Berit didn’t say anything.

  “I have to ask.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He didn’t say anything when he left?”

  Berit lowered her head and looked like she was trying to remember the day before. Beatrice could imagine how she was going through those last few minutes before John had walked out the door and disappeared from her life for good. How many times was she going to relive that day?

  “He was his usual self,” she said finally. “I think he said something about the pet store. He was going to buy a pump he had ordered.”

  “Which store?”

  “I don’t know. He went to all of them.”

  She started to cry.

  “He had a hell of a fine aquarium,” Lennart said. “They wrote about it in the papers.”

  Silence fell.

  “I thought maybe he was helping with the snow removal. He also talked about trying to get a job at the sheet-metal shop of someone he knew.”

  “Micke?” Lennart asked.

  Berit looked at her brother-in-law and nodded.

 
Micke, Beatrice thought. Now we’re getting all the names.

  Haver, Beatrice, Wende, Berglund, Fredriksson, Riis, Peter Lundin—no relation to Asta and Anton—and Ottosson had gathered around an enormous box of gingerbread cookies. Fredriksson helped himself to a generous portion and piled the cookies up in front of his cup. Eleven in all, Beatrice noted.

  “Think they’ll make a good boy out of you?” she asked, referring to the old folk saying. Fredriksson nodded absently. Ottosson, who must have considered himself good enough already, declined the offer of gingerbread when the tin came his way.

  “Go on, take one,” Riis said.

  “No, thank you,” the chief said.

  “Little John bled to death,” Haver said suddenly. “Someone, or perhaps more than one, stabbed him with a knife or some such sharp object. Blood loss is the official cause of death.”

  The group around the table digested this piece of information. Haver paused. He imagined his colleagues creating an inner picture of Little John’s final moments.

  “In the stages leading up to his death he was subjected to repeated blows to the head and chest,” Haver continued. “In addition, he has burn marks, probably caused by cigarettes, on his arms and genitals.”

  “So we’re looking for a sadistic smoker,” Riis said.

  “Aren’t all smokers sadists?” Lundin asked.

  Haver gave him a look and continued.

  “He probably died sometime between four and eight P.M. yesterday. The exact time of death is difficult to establish because of the preserving effect of the cold on the body.”

  “Any trace of alcohol or drugs in his blood?” Ottosson asked.

  “He was clean. The only things they found were the beginnings of an ulcer and a liver that could have been in better shape.”

  “Alcoholic?”

  “No, you couldn’t call him that, but he put his liver to work,” Haver said and looked suddenly very tired.

  “Can his death have been a mistake?” Beatrice said. “The fact that he bled to death after so many small wounds indicates an ongoing assault. If your intention is to murder someone, surely you would aim to kill the first time.”

  This is absurd, Haver thought.

  “Torture,” he said. “Torture is what it is.”

  “He was a tough bastard,” Ottosson said. “I don’t think he was an easy one to break.”

  “You can’t predict that about someone,” Fredriksson said and had his eighth cookie. “It’s one thing to sound tough from behind a desk when you’re being questioned about a theft, it’s quite another to keep a stiff upper lip when you’re being tortured to death.”

  Ottosson wasn’t one to belabor a point, but this time he defended his statement.

  “Little John was stubborn and brave. He never gave in even though he was small.”

  “But surely you never tortured him?” Riis said.

  Ottosson had told them that he had questioned Little John on several occasions. He had been there when John had been brought in the first time at the age of sixteen and he had seen him from time to time during the following five or six years.

  “Do we think this is part of some old business or something new?” Ottosson continued. “For my part, I have trouble believing that John would have gotten himself mixed up in something new. You’ve met his wife and kid, Bea, and John seemed to have been getting along well, at least these past ten years. Why would he jeopardize all that now?”

  Bea nodded and indicated that Ottosson should keep going. She liked hearing what he had to say. He had a long history that stretched out before she had joined the force or even started school. He was a wise man. He hardly ever lectured them in overly long harangues, and just now she wanted him to keep talking, but he stopped and snatched Fredriksson’s last gingerbread cookie, giving Beatrice a mischievous look.

  “His wife seems all right and the boy too. That is to say, he’s been unemployed for a while and that probably caused a few problems but hadn’t led to anything serious. Some partying from time to time, his wife said, but no serious drinking. She may have been putting a good face on things but I think he was keeping to the straight and narrow. He spent a lot of time on his fish tank—it’s the biggest I’ve seen. Four meters by one meter, at least. It takes up a whole wall.”

  “Talk about water damage if that thing started to leak,” Riis said.

  Ottosson shot him a look as if to say, Enough of your stupid comments. Riis gave him a wry smile.

  “It seems to have been his main interest,” Beatrice said. “He belonged to a tropical fish society, was active on the board, and had dreams of owning his own tropical fish store one day.”

  Ottosson nodded.

  “What about the brother?” Haver asked. “He doesn’t seem completely aboveboard. Could he have gotten John involved in something?”

  “I don’t think so,” Beatrice said. “Not consciously anyway. Lennart seemed genuinely surprised. Of course you would be shocked if your brother was murdered, but there isn’t anything that indicates he even sensed that John had been pulled into any kind of trouble.”

  “He didn’t look too bright,” Ottosson said. “Do you think he was simply unaware of something he had caused, that it would have these kinds of consequences?”

  Beatrice looked doubtful.

  “Maybe he’s just putting two and two together now,” Ottosson said.

  Morenius, who was the head of KUT, the criminal information service, walked into the room. He threw a sizable folder on the table, sat down, and sighed heavily.

  “Sorry I’m late but there’s a lot going on right now.” He underscored this with a new sigh.

  “Have some coffee,” Ottosson said. “It’ll pick you up.”

  Morenius laughed and reached for the insulated coffee jug.

  “Cookies?” Ottosson said.

  “Lennart Jonsson is a steady client with us and several other departments,” Morenius started. “He has fourteen counts of traffic violations, three counts of drunk driving, sixteen counts of theft—three of which with aggravated circumstances—one count of assault and probably twenty others unknown to us, one attempted swindle, one count of drug possession, but now it’s too far back in time, three counts of unlawful threats and disturbance in court proceedings. The list goes on. In addition, he has ten financial penalties and a debt of thirty thousand. He receives social welfare and has filed a claim for early retirement.”

  “What the hell for?” Lundin broke in.

  Morenius looked exhausted after reciting his lengthy list but took a sip of coffee and continued.

  “Apparently he has an old injury,” he said. “He fell from some scaffolding about five years ago and has basically been unable to work since then.”

  “But he has worked?”

  “Mostly construction, but even for Ragnsell’s and as a bouncer for a short time. There have been periods where he’s lived a pretty normal life.”

  “Is Lennart our key to the whole thing?”

  Ottosson’s question hung in the air. Fredriksson helped himself to a new heap of cookies and kept chewing. Riis looked bored. Lundin looked down at his hands, and everyone expected him to get up and go to the bathroom to wash them. His germophobia was a running joke. The need for paper towels had risen considerably since Lundin had started working.

  Haver started to talk about his mapping of the Jonsson family’s circle of friends and acquaintances.

  Beatrice listened at first but then her thoughts returned to her visit with Berit Jonsson. She tried to catch hold of something that had nagged at her then, something that came up when they were talking about her son. Was it something Berit had said? A look, or a change of expression? A kind of concern?

  Ottosson interrupted her train of thought.

  “Hold on, Bea. I just asked you a question. Did Berit say anything about John’s finances? Did the family have a hard time after he lost his job?”

  “Not that I know of. It didn’t look as if they were suffering u
nduly. Berit works part-time as an in-home attendant for social services, and John probably got his unemployment benefit.”

  “We’ll run the routine checks,” Ottosson said. “Can you handle that, Riis?”

  Riis nodded. It was the kind of assignment that appealed to him.

  “I’m planning to go back there tomorrow, talk to Berit and the boy, and search John’s belongings,” Beatrice said. “Does that sound okay?”

  “Sounds fine,” Haver said. “Checking the pet stores didn’t give us anything, but we’ll keep at it. There must be other stores with some of this equipment, or people selling it out of their homes. Someone will have to check the tropical fish societies. We need to determine all of John’s activities that day.”

  Ottosson ended with some general remarks that no one paid any attention to, though they all waited politely until he was done. Framing these meetings in the right way was important to Ottosson. He wanted them to have a cozy, personable feel.

  It was quarter past eight in the evening. The assignment tasks were complete.

  Seven

  Mikael Andersson phoned the police at ten thirty. The call center—that is to say Fredriksson, since everyone else was in Eriksberg dealing with an assault—handled the matter.

  Fredriksson had been enjoying his evening in the office. It was nice and quiet, and he finally had time to sort through some papers. He employed a to-him-brilliant system of eight piles, the largest of which was destined for that most comprehensive of archives: the wastebasket. He thought about how the advent of computers had triggered all that talk of the paperless office. Well, that certainly hadn’t become a reality at the Uppsala police station.

  Not that he had anything against paper. His inner bureaucrat reveled in the folders, ledgers, and binders. Most of his colleagues, especially the younger ones, stored a lot of information on the computer. But not Fredriksson. He wanted to have rustling papers and binders to leaf through. The hole punch and stapler occupied a central place on his desk.

  If the call interrupted him, the tone of his voice did not betray it.