The Viper

by Hakan Ostlundh

  “Maybe you’re right,” said Eva.

  “But then I think that maybe I’ve got it all wrong, that it’s all one and the same murderer, and that we haven’t understood the motive at all. There’s a whole bunch of money after all. What if Rickard was also…”

  He stopped short, stood there silently with the phone pressed against his ear. He could see Jesper Mann’s door from the spot where he was standing, partially hidden behind a blue Saab.

  “Never mind, it’s just pure speculation … So, how are things otherwise?” he asked after another pause.

  “I’ve still got work to do here. I’m sending the blade in for analysis anyway,” said Eva.

  “Okay, I’m just about to question someone,” said Fredrik and was sorry he asked.

  52.

  Jesper Mann lived in a little two-room apartment in a crooked old house with a low ceiling. Fredrik could have easily reached up and touched it.

  “So you want to talk about Rickard?” said Jesper Mann.

  He sat sunken in a turquoise couch, dressed in a pair of shiny sweatpants, a T-shirt, and a pair of thin dark-brown leather slippers on his bare feet. The room they were sitting in looked cozy with green plants climbing along the windowsills and a big, cluttered shelf full of books perched upright or stacked at random. Two goldfish were swimming around in a fishbowl furnished with a single strand of Cabomba growing out of the white gravel at the bottom.

  “Well. We haven’t been able to get hold of Rickard for almost three days now. Do you know where he could be?”

  Jesper Mann was half a head shorter than Fredrik and looked like he spent a lot of time at the gym. He had short, dark, naturally curly hair and self-consciously long, pointed sideburns. He worked behind the bar at Friheten, as he had told Fredrik earlier on the phone. Today he was free until five o’clock.

  “I saw that you found his father,” said Jesper Mann.

  “Do you think it’s connected?” asked Fredrik.

  “I don’t know. I mean … it would be strange if it wasn’t, but I’ve no idea how. So he hasn’t been home?”

  “No, not since late Wednesday evening. His sister thought that he’d gone to see a friend in Visby, we thought that it might have been you.”

  “No, he hasn’t been here,” said Jesper.

  “When did you last see him?”

  “Over two weeks ago.”

  “But you’ve been in touch?”

  “Not really.”

  “You sent him an e-mail just last Wednesday,” said Fredrik.

  Jesper Mann stiffened. The good-natured smile evaporated. It looked like he regretted sitting on the couch instead of on a chair like Fredrik. Maybe he also regretted his nonchalant dress and the slippers with his pale toes poking out.

  He straightened up as best he could among all the cushions on the couch, threw out his hands with his elbows resting against his hips.

  “I’ve got nothing to hide,” he said.

  “I don’t think you do, either,” said Fredrik, even though it wasn’t quite true.

  “If you’ve read our e-mails then you know that it was mostly just trivial Web chatter, the stuff you rattle off just to remind people that you’re still alive,” Jesper Mann continued.

  “I understand.”

  “I didn’t really count that as being in touch,” he said.

  “I understand,” Fredrik assured him once again.

  Jesper Mann dropped it, sank back down a little into the couch again.

  “Any idea where he might be?” said Fredrik.

  Jesper Mann thought for a moment, but couldn’t come up with anything.

  “To tell you the truth I don’t know him very well … that is I know him, but I don’t know so much about him.”

  “Is that how you perceive him then?” said Fredrik.

  “How do you mean?”

  “As being a little secretive? That he doesn’t reveal too much about himself?”

  “Not exactly, but we…”

  He looked away and shrugged his shoulders.

  “You…?” said Fredrik.

  “We didn’t really socialize in that way,” he said.

  Fredrik wasn’t sure he understood what that meant, or rather, he was sure that he didn’t understand.

  “How do you know each other?”

  The apartment was at street-level and every now and then a diffuse shadow passed through the room whenever someone walked past in the narrow alleyway outside.

  “We got to know each other last summer, out on the town. We’ve met up a little sporadically since then, but nothing I’d really call a relationship.”

  “A relationship?”

  Jesper Mann smiled.

  “You didn’t know Rickard is gay?”

  “No,” said Fredrik.

  “Not that strange really. He barely knows himself,” said Jesper Mann.

  He sank back into the couch and perched one foot up on his knee.

  “You mean that he only recently discovered his orientation, or that he has difficulty accepting it?” asked Fredrik.

  “The latter. Still stuck inside the closet with a double bolt. It’s always the same pattern. He gets in touch, we meet, we have sex, then he leaves, and then you don’t hear from him again for another month or two,” said Jesper and looked as if he thought this was a wonderful arrangement.

  “Except for the occasional e-mail,” Fredrik corrected.

  “Yeah, except for some casual e-mail chitchat.”

  They heard some voices outside the window, a few clipped words from a conversation that briefly gave way to a mumbling before fading away in the distance.

  “But if you’re so intimate with each other then surely you must have gotten to know him a little better than that, even if he does disappear after each time you meet. If you try and think back, there’s no chance he could have mentioned some place he often goes, or where he has friends?”

  “He said once that he wanted to travel to Japan to visit his father, but that’s hardly likely now.”

  “Nothing closer to home?”

  Jesper Mann shook his head.

  “What do you know about Rickard and his father? What was their relationship like?” asked Fredrik.

  “He didn’t talk much about his family.”

  “He just said that he wanted to visit his father in Japan.”

  “That was pretty screwed up, too, if you ask me,” said Jesper Mann and put his foot down on the floor again.

  “Screwed up?”

  “I mean on the part of his father.”

  He leaned forward, laid his arms against his thighs, and let his hands rest loosely in each other.

  “He was working over there for a few years and not once did he invite Rickard, his daughter, or his wife to come visit. He was loaded, so money was certainly not the problem.”

  “Did you say that to Rickard?”

  “Something like that.”

  “And how did he react?”

  “He defended his father, almost became aggressive. I don’t remember the details, but something about his father’s work being so demanding, that he didn’t have time for anything but work when he was in Tokyo, and whenever he could he came home to visit.”

  “Do think that was an accurate description?”

  “No idea, but Ricky seemed to believe it anyway.”

  “And that was all he ever said about his father?” asked Fredrik.

  There was a sudden glint in Jesper Mann’s eyes.

  “I just remembered something. I had blurted out something about my father, just as an aside, but something pretty negative, and Rickard started defending his father as if he were the one being attacked. My comment may well have been a bit sweeping, as if I had been talking about all fathers, but he got very upset.”

  “Do you remember what it was about?”

  “No, but it probably had something to do with my father’s attitude toward my choice of lifestyle. That’s my pet peeve where he’s concerned.”

&n
bsp; “Do you think it’s his father’s fault that Rickard hasn’t come out of the closet?”

  “Isn’t it always?” said Jesper with a short laugh.

  He straightened up and looked at his watch as if he thought that the questioning had gone on long enough. It almost looked like he was about to get up from the couch.

  “What do you know about Rickard’s drug habits?” said Fredrik and noticed how Jesper’s eyes widened a little.

  Fredrik couldn’t help but feel a slight satisfaction at the sight of Jesper Mann’s body language tightening up.

  “Drugs? No idea. I don’t think so. He drank of course, if that’s what you mean?”

  “If I had meant alcohol then I would’ve said so,” said Fredrik.

  “Oh. Well, no, he didn’t do any drugs, as far as I know. But like I said, I really don’t know him very well.”

  Fredrik gave him a questioning look and got a puzzled one in return.

  “I’ve read your e-mails, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out what all the little code words mean.”

  “Code words?” said Jesper Mann.

  “Yes.”

  “The fact that you go in and read our e-mails, well that’s just…”

  He waved his right hand dismissively in the air.

  “But that we shouldn’t be allowed to express ourselves as we choose,” he continued and let out a forced laugh.

  “I think,” said Fredrik, “that if I have this apartment searched, we’ll find enough to detain you for a few days while we investigate the rest of the operation.”

  “Operation, I don’t have an operation,” said Jesper Mann looking shocked.

  Fredrik wondered if he’d perhaps been a bit heavy-handed. The idea had been to scare him into answering, not to put the fear of God into him.

  “We can’t be sure of that until we’ve looked into it,” he said dryly.

  Jesper Mann looked a little less terrified, even if he was still gripping the turquoise seat cushion tightly with his left hand.

  “He did a little party drugs.”

  “Like what?”

  “E, amphetamines, coke on occasion.”

  “That sounds like a whole lot,” said Fredrik.

  “Look, I already told you that we’ve seen each other maybe once a month, max, since last summer, so really I can’t say anything about his habits.”

  “But he took drugs on those occasions when you saw each other?”

  “On those occasions he was usually high on something, yes.”

  “But you don’t know whether he took anything otherwise?” asked Fredrik.

  “No. But he doesn’t seem like a serious junkie to me.”

  Fredrik thought it sounded like Jesper Mann had just described one, but they obviously lived in different worlds. The definition of junkie was apparently also a question of lifestyle.

  “I’m not going to ask how he got hold of his drugs since I don’t consider that to be relevant to this investigation,” said Fredrik. “At least not at this time. But it may prove to be later on.”

  Jesper Mann said nothing.

  * * *

  WHEN FREDRIK EMERGED from the entrance to the building he wondered how far along Ryska Gränd he would get before Jesper went rushing into the bathroom to flush his stash of weekend drugs down the toilet.

  When he had taken another thirty steps across the cobbled lane and passed the spot where he had stood with the cell phone pressed against his ear speaking to Eva half an hour earlier, he was struck by another thought entirely.

  During the conversation with Eva he had argued that it wouldn’t have done any good for Arvid Traneus to try and hide the murders of Kristina and Anders—if he, in fact, had committed them. They would have been missed soon after the murders and Arvid would have been the prime suspect even in that scenario. But who was it that would miss them? Who would miss Kristina? Who wouldn’t get hold of her when he called? Who exactly would start to wonder if something was wrong and drive over to the farm in Levide to take a look, and then find them dead on the living room floor after having unlocked the door with his own key?

  Rickard Traneus.

  That ought to have been Rickard Traneus. Instead it was the cleaner who found them, two days after they had been murdered, when the blood had already congealed into black islands on the living room’s parquet floor.

  Fredrik had wondered why Rickard Traneus hadn’t had more contact with his parents even though his father had just returned from Tokyo. His father had been away for three years, apart from a few short visits, and yet when he finally returns, his son only speaks to him briefly over the phone. A family dinner had been planned for Friday evening, the sister was coming all the way down from Stockholm for it. After Monday, Rickard doesn’t hear a single word from his parents, nor does he try to call them. And he doesn’t drop by to say hello to the father, even though he’s only a few miles away. Isn’t that strange?

  It could of course be explained by the fact that they had a complicated relationship.

  That wasn’t implausible. But it could also be explained by the fact that Rickard Traneus knew there was no one to call.

  53.

  Göran received Elin Traneus in his office. She looked surprisingly composed and steady considering everything she’d been through over the past few weeks.

  She took a seat in the visitor’s chair with her back to the window. Göran sat down across from her at the long table with his back to the big safe.

  “I appreciate your coming in like this. I thought it would be good to speak with you before you head off to the mainland,” he said.

  Elin sighed, but in what seemed to be a positive way, like a long restful exhalation.

  “I have to go back. I think it’s for the best. I can’t do anything here anyway and we won’t be able to hold the funeral for a while yet.”

  “It’s completely up to you. But I’d be grateful if you would stay in touch so we know where we can reach you,” said Göran.

  “Well, I’m not going to disappear,” said Elin. “I’m just going home to study. I’ll be at my home address for the next five years.”

  She actually smiled. It was strange, but ever since Elin Traneus had come in through the door Göran had felt as if he was witnessing a conclusion. Although in reality they were in the middle of something. He couldn’t really understand how it all fit together.

  “Let’s hope this whole thing gets resolved quicker than that,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Elin and fingered the shoulder strap of the sports bag she had set down next to her chair.

  Once again, he couldn’t help but be surprised at how she managed to sit there and answer his questions. How could she handle that, when both her parents had been taken from her in a manner that might reasonably be expected to leave her no peace at all? He’d seen that before, people who managed to cope under the most appalling circumstances, but each time it was just as difficult for him to understand how they did it. You got up, did what you had to do. Life went on. A truism that contained some of life’s greatness and its pettiness.

  “When your sister, Stefania, was fifteen or sixteen, she was supposed to have had a boyfriend named Leo. Is that something you remember anything about?”

  “Leo, sure I remember him,” she said.

  “You wouldn’t have been very old. Eight or nine,” said Göran.

  “No, but it caused such … well, there was a lot of fuss over that.”

  “How so?”

  “Mother didn’t like her seeing him. Which is understandable. Only I don’t know what he was really like, of course,” she said.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, he was sort of going astray, but … I mean, maybe that came later.”

  “Did something happen between them, between Stefania and Leo?” asked Göran.

  “Not that I know of,” said Elin. “It was mostly that my parents didn’t like him.”

  She let go of the shoulder strap which slid down onto t
he floor. Her expression revealed nothing about what she felt for her dead sister. Maybe she had put it behind her. Ten years ago.

  “So your father didn’t like it, either, that she was seeing Leo?” said Göran.

  “No, but I think that it was more my mother who … I mean, this isn’t something I understood back then, but more that I pieced it together later. My mother and I spoke about it. My father was more generally against it. He didn’t like the idea of boyfriends period. But it was my mother who specifically didn’t like Leo. I think she nagged my father about it and he finally put an end to it.”

  “How did he do that?”

  “Leo wasn’t allowed to come over.”

  “But surely there are other places they could’ve met?”

  “Stefania was in ninth grade. I don’t think she had the strength to stand up to him,” said Elin.

  “No…”

  “My father wasn’t the sort of person you talked back to,” she added.

  She looked up at the clock that hung above the table, positioned so that Göran could see it from his desk.

  “I don’t want to make you miss your ferry,” he said.

  “That’s okay, I’ll make it,” she said.

  Göran opened his mouth and then closed it again as he considered how to phrase his next question.

  “You said that your father physically abused your mother. Did he hit Stefania, too?”

  “No,” she said firmly, “he didn’t hit her, he didn’t hit any of us.”

  She turned her gaze toward the door, longingly Göran thought, and he felt a little guilty for keeping her there.

  “If you’re going to make your ferry maybe we should…”

  “He never hit us, but you always wondered if he was going to. When the first time was going be,” she said and turned back to Göran. “I think Stefania thought a lot about it, but she’s dead and now he’s dead, too, so what difference does it make?”

  A ray of sunlight flashed in the skylight. It hit Göran in the middle of his face and he shut his eyes involuntarily.

  “I know, I’m studying psychology. Sometime I’m going to have to dig through all that. But not now and not here.”

  “No,” said Göran and couldn’t think of anything more to say.

  He got up slowly to indicate that she was free to go now. Elin got up, and said good-bye with a short handshake. He saw her out. He would’ve preferred not to, but station regulations required it. It was difficult to say anything more, so they walked the whole way in silence.