Black Lies, Red Blood: A Mystery

by Kjell Eriksson

  “Would you like some too?” Maja Melkersson asked. “There’s nothing like a glass of cold milk in the morning,” she continued, taking Sammy Nilsson’s reply as a given, as she immediately set out a glass, got a jug from the refrigerator, and poured in milk.

  “Yes, that was good,” said the carrier.

  “It’s the least I can do,” said the woman. “You run here every morning and make sure I find out who’s died.”

  Sammy Nilsson guessed that she was referring to the obituaries in the local newspaper, but this particular morning her comment sounded macabre, to say the least.

  “Can you tell me a little,” said Sammy Nilsson, as he sipped the milk and nodded appreciatively at Maja Melkersson, who was observing him.

  “I noticed the smell first,” Urban Fredlund began.

  “What smell? Was there already vomit when you arrived?”

  “No, that’s my fault,” he said, giving Sammy Nilsson a quick look. “I’m sorry about making a mess.”

  Sammy Nilsson made a deprecating gesture.

  “It smelled like garbage,” the carrier continued. “Old cheese, mainly. Then when I came up to the third floor I saw … I saw the legs first.”

  “You went up and looked?”

  “Of course, I had to check whether or not she was injured.”

  “But you knew right away that she was dead.”

  Urban nodded.

  “Then I ran halfway down the stairs. I thought I would make it outside, but I didn’t.”

  “That’s nothing to be ashamed of,” said Sammy Nilsson. “Did you recognize her?”

  “No, but there aren’t too many you recognize on your route. Most of them are still asleep when I’m working.”

  “You didn’t see anything strange, anything that was different, in the yard or in the neighborhood?”

  “No, it was a typical Sunday morning. Quiet and peaceful. Until now.”

  Sammy Nilsson wrote down his name and contact information.

  “One thing,” said Urban Fredlund. “Could you deliver the last newspaper to Wilson, at the very top? It’s probably on the stairway.”

  Sammy Nilsson nodded, said thanks for the milk, and left them.

  In the meantime the forensics technicians had arrived, the inexhaustible Morgansson and the considerably less energetic Johannesson.

  “We don’t really have time,” said Morgansson. “We were just getting in the car to drive up to Dalarna.”

  “Dalarna?”

  “Yeah, a young kid in Hedemora was cut down with an ice pick last night,” said Johannesson. “Half of Dalarna is down with the flu, our associates in Falun anyway, so we have to intervene.”

  “But there must be more than the two of you in Forensics?”

  Morgansson smiled apologetically.

  “They’ve got it too. Haven’t you noticed that half the building is coughing and sniffling? Jakobsson is the only one who’s healthy, but typically he’s on vacation. That’s the situation.”

  “How’s it look?” Johannesson asked. “Can the apartment wait until tomorrow? I mean, it looks like an accident.”

  “Okay,” said Sammy. “But wrap up the trash bag, then I’ll take it along and put it in your fridge.”

  Sammy continued up the stairs and stuffed the newspaper into Wilson’s mail slot. The door to Ingegerd Melander’s apartment was open, but only slightly. He took hold high up on the door frame and pushed it open.

  Beatrice was in the kitchen. She had put on protective socks and gloves. There was a smell of smoke and old, dried-up beer.

  “He’s lying on the couch sleeping, evidently dead drunk,” she said. “I thought I would look around a little before we wake him, if that’s even possible.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Johnny Andersson, her new boyfriend. Ola and I met him here the last time.”

  “No one else?”

  “No.”

  “Is this a crime scene?”

  “Doubtful,” said Beatrice. “It looks like she started tidying up, went to take out the garbage, and fell down.”

  “Anything exciting?”

  “Not so far. There’s been a party, that much is clear.”

  The kitchen counters, which on her first visit had been almost clinically clean, were now overflowing with plates, glasses, and food scraps. Sammy counted three whole bottles of liquor, all empty, plus a fair number of beer cans.

  “There were several of them,” he determined.

  He counted six large serving plates and just as many table settings. On the stove was an ovenproof dish that presumably contained potato casserole. Three jars of different kinds of herring were on the kitchen counter, all empty.

  He lifted the lid of a saucepan, in which there were three new potatoes left. In a frying pan was half a sausage, which someone had bitten off in the middle, perhaps a final nighttime bite.

  Sammy sighed and put the lid back on. It reminded him that he had not had any breakfast.

  “Shall we wake up Mr. Andersson?”

  “I’d like to look around a little in peace and quiet first,” said Beatrice.

  “You’ve had breakfast, I’m guessing.”

  Beatrice ignored his comment.

  “Let’s take the bedroom first, that’s where women hide their secrets,” she said.

  “Shouldn’t we let Morgansson—”

  “There’s nothing that indicates a crime,” said Beatrice.

  “But if she was going out with the garbage, why just take one trash bag? It’s full of shit here, enough to fill a container.”

  “She took the worst of it, what smelled bad,” said Beatrice.

  “I think we should wake up Johnny anyway to get his version,” Sammy insisted.

  His feeling of discomfort had increased. He didn’t like Beatrice’s somewhat lecturing tone either.

  “If I wake up our snoozing friend, you can look around a little. Then we’ll save a little time too.”

  Beatrice shrugged and went into the bedroom.

  The only thing Johnny Andersson had on was a pair of fairly clean underwear. He was lying with one leg stretched out on the couch and the other foot resting on the floor. His hands were clasped on his hairy chest. He was snoring lightly.

  Sammy Nilsson observed him a few seconds before he took him by the shoulder and shook.

  “Time to wake up!”

  Johnny moved restlessly, hiccoughed, but did not wake up.

  “Johnny!”

  Another shake. No reaction. Sammy bent down over the sleeping man, whose breath defied all description.

  “What did you eat yesterday?” Sammy mumbled, and shook the lifeless body again, this time considerably more brusquely.

  Johnny Andersson opened his eyes and looked confusedly at the policeman.

  “What the hell!”

  “Sammy Nilsson, police.”

  “Huh?”

  “You heard me. Sit up, we have to talk a little.”

  * * *

  It took several minutes to get a more or less clear picture of what had happened the night before. Johnny was hungover but still capable of giving an account of what had gone on. About a dozen “acquaintances” had celebrated. Ingegerd had won a little money on the lottery, Johnny explained. At midnight most of them disappeared. He himself passed out.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked suddenly.

  “There’s been an accident,” said Sammy. “Ingegerd fell on the stairs.”

  “What do you mean, stairs?”

  “She went out with the garbage.”

  “Typical,” said Johnny. “Everything has to be so fucking tidy.”

  “She fell badly.”

  “Was it the neighbor lady who complained?”

  “Listen up now! Ingegerd fell and struck her head. It was really bad, she’s dead.”

  Johnny stared at the policeman, shook his head, and fumbled for a bottle on the table, but knocked it over.

  “Dead?”

  Sammy
Nilsson nodded.

  Johnny stared at the vodka running over the edge of the table and dripping down onto the carpet. He took a glass and captured a few drops, which he knocked back at once. He was ready to repeat the maneuver, but Sammy Nilsson took the glass out of his hand.

  “This is not the time to drink,” he said gently. “We have to talk a little.”

  “What the hell, she’s dead? Are you sure? What the hell is this?”

  He got up suddenly, took a few steps, and stopped in the middle of the room.

  “But what do you mean, she’s in the bedroom!”

  “No, that’s my associate Beatrice, whom you met the other day.”

  “Where’s Ingegerd?”

  “Sit down, Johnny. There’s nothing we can do now. You have to tell me who was here last night and what happened.”

  “Happened? Nothing happened! I said we were partying. Is that illegal, maybe?”

  “Sit down.”

  Johnny obeyed unexpectedly and sank down in an armchair. He reached out and righted the bottle.

  “So where should I go now? Tell me that.”

  Beatrice came into the living room and observed Johnny Andersson, who raised the empty glass and brought it to his lips, set it down with a surprised expression, as if the very thought that there was no more vodka was incredible.

  “Okay, I think it’s best if you come along with us, then you can tell us what happened yesterday and who was there. You can’t stay here anyway.”

  “What do you mean, I said we were partying.”

  “But we have to get that down on paper, as a formality,” said Sammy.

  “So where will I crash?”

  “We have comfortable single rooms,” said Beatrice before she disappeared out into the stairwell.

  “We’ll leave in a few minutes,” said Sammy.

  Nineteen

  Anders Brant was the key, Sammy Nilsson was sure of that. Bosse Gränsberg’s violent death was not strange per se. That a homeless person with substance abuse problems was beaten to death was, in the eyes of many, not surprising. Many of the victims, and the perpetrators as well, were in that category.

  The only thing that deviated from the pattern was the journalist. They had demonstrably had contact: Brant’s fingerprints had been secured in the trailer, and the scrap of paper with the telephone number they found in the murdered man’s pocket proved this was not a coincidence.

  Sammy Nilsson stood in his office in front of the desk with his hands at his sides, his thinking pose. There was something he had said to Lindell, something that might have significance for his investigation, but he could not remember what it was.

  He went over the most recent meetings with Lindell. Recently these had been brief; she seemed to be more than allowably absent at the moment. Was there perhaps something to what Morgansson had hinted, well, maintained actually, that Lindell and Haver were having an affair?

  Sammy laughed. That would be something for Ottosson to brood about, a love story at Homicide, with all that would entail.

  They had talked about Brant. Lindell asked about the journalist, where he lived, they had very briefly discussed her investigation of Klara Lovisa, but Sammy Nilsson could not find any entry there to his own pondering about the duo Brant–Gränsberg.

  He decided to return to Brant’s apartment. Maybe the answer was there, something he and Morgansson had overlooked. The papers they found in his apartment and only looked at in passing seemed harmless in this context. From what Sammy Nilsson could understand this was background material and drafts of articles. He feared the day when Brant came back and discovered their trespassing. Journalists were a sensitive breed.

  Morgansson had found a handful of fingerprints, but not Bosse Gränsberg’s. None of the others were on file. Nothing they had seen in the small two-room apartment seemed suspicious or could link Brant more closely to the murdered man.

  While he was searching for building manager Nilsson’s phone number he thought about whether it was necessary to contact the prosecutor, but decided to wait. Knowing Fritzén, he would question whether another visit was appropriate.

  Mr. Nilsson was not hard to convince to provide the master key once again, and they agreed to meet outside Brant’s apartment half an hour later.

  * * *

  His curiosity was even greater this time. Sammy Nilsson explained the visit by saying that he had probably forgotten his glasses, it was nothing more dramatic than that. The building manager looked skeptical and offered to help with the search, but Sammy declined the offer.

  The apartment gave an impression of abandonment, much more tangibly than the other day. Maybe he’s left for good, thought Sammy Nilsson, while he made an initial round of the kitchen, bedroom, and living room.

  If you were going to leave, what would you definitely not leave behind? He did not see any valuables, the pictures seemed mediocre, a few graphic prints and a couple of posters were what adorned the walls. He let his gaze wander across the apartment, pulled out the drawers in a small dresser in the hall, but like the time before found nothing exciting. He returned to the bedroom, as if driven by a haunted spirit.

  Something ought to speak to him! He scanned the spines of the books. Should he leaf through every book? That seemed both dusty and superfluous. Brant was not suspected of any crime. His eyes fell on a framed photo on the bookshelf. He had noted the picture during the previous visit without finding it remarkable, seeing it instead as a memory from the past left out as a reminder.

  It depicted a bandy team, fifteen or so young men in club uniform, a couple of coaches, a type of picture Sammy Nilsson had seen often. He himself had a number of such photographs, stored away in some drawer. Maybe that was why he hadn’t paid attention to it the last time.

  He should have known better. In the everyday objects that fill a person’s home is where the story is found.

  He took down the photo, studied the faces more closely. He was as good as certain that the third man from the left in the back row was Bo Gränsberg. Diagonally below him, crouching on one knee, must be Anders Brant. It was taken perhaps twenty or twenty-five years ago. The team members radiated a kind of moving innocence, their open, exhilarated faces testified to success, perhaps unexpected. Sammy had both experienced that and seen the rush when the improbable happened on the field, the feeling that did not really take hold, but simply burst forth in an exhilaration reminiscent of the unfathomable euphoria of love.

  The two coaches looked guardedly happy, more aware that they were part of a picture that would show up on the sports pages of the local newspaper and decorate the clubhouse and many homes.

  Sammy Nilsson knew what happened after the photo session. The players would hug each other, and once again go over the decisive moments in the match just ended. Temporary misses that created irritation and anger would be transformed into jokes and friendly banter. Everyone was a winner today.

  He studied the one he believed was Bosse Gränsberg a little more carefully. He had pulled off the mouth guard from one bracket and a scar on his chin shone white.

  * * *

  He picked up the cell phone, dialed information, and asked to be connected to Gunilla Lange.

  She answered cautiously, saying her surname. Sammy Nilsson introduced himself.

  Yes, Bosse had played bandy for Sirius in his youth, Gunilla recalled, and he got the scar on his chin as a junior. An ice-skate blade that hit his chin.

  Who could he talk with, did she recall any coaches or players? Gunilla Lange suggested that he contact Lasse Svensson, the restaurateur, who had been a player and was still active in the club. Gunilla Lange thought maybe he could give him the information he needed. She remembered that Bosse and Lasse said hi when they ran into each other. A few times she and Bosse had also visited one of Svensson’s restaurants and exchanged a few words with him there.

  Before they ended the call she asked why he was interested in Bosse’s bandy friends.

  “We’re just trying to
chart out Bosse’s life,” Sammy Nilsson answered, thinking that sounded a little peculiar even to him.

  “But it’s almost twenty years since he stopped playing sports. That can’t have anything to do with the murder, can it?”

  “Probably not,” said Sammy.

  * * *

  He stuck the photo inside the waistband of his pants, pulled his T-shirt over it, and left the apartment. The building manager was standing in the yard, outside the entry.

  “Unfortunately, the glasses weren’t there,” said Sammy. “But they were the cheap kind. I lose a bunch of them every year.”

  The manager did not look convinced.

  “Does this have anything to do with that donna?” he asked. “I mean, that you’re running around here all the time.”

  “What donna?”

  The superintendent smiled, judging by appearances very satisfied in having caught the policeman’s interest.

  “I don’t like to pry into people’s personal lives,” he continued.

  Of course you do, thought Sammy, that’s why you’re a building manager.

  “Well, there’s no donna involved,” he said in an indifferent tone, making an effort to leave. “We just want to exchange a few words with Brant.”

  The building manager took a step to the side as if to block Sammy’s way.

  “Is she one of those concealed refugees?”

  “I’m in a bit of a hurry,” said Sammy.

  “She stayed here,” said the manager quietly, and now he put on a conspiratorial expression. “A nice-looking lady, there’s no doubt about it, curvy and dark, but extremely mysterious.”

  “I see, and when was this?”

  “A month ago. The association would really like to know who—”

  “Mysterious, you said.”

  “Yes, she hardly ever went out.”

  Sammy sensed that the package of condoms and the pubic hair in Brant’s bed now had an explanation.

  “I guess they had other things to do,” he said.

  “Yes, I believe that,” said the manager, now noticeably amused by the direction the conversation had taken. “Now I call him the journal-lust.”

  “You have no idea what her name is, this dark beauty?”