Brant stretched out his arm, opened the refrigerator, and took out a Brahma. There were glasses on a tray on the table. He filled two and set one in front of Ivaldo.
The man waited patiently until the foam had settled and then emptied the glass in one gulp, thanked him with a nod and continued his story.
“Our family comes from the inland, sertão, in the vicinity of Jacobina, do you know it?”
Anders Brant nodded. Not because he had visited Jacobina, a city perhaps three hundred kilometers northwest of Salvador, but he guessed that the landscape looked much like around Itaberaba: caatinga, bushy vegetation worn by wind and sun, river channels dried out for long periods of time, cactus, merciless heat in the summer, stony, meager soil, which could be made fertile if irrigation could be arranged.
“Then you know. It was poor. We had no land. When my wife died my three sons and I moved here. I thought they might get some education. I had a brother here in Salvador, in Massaranduba, and we moved in with him. It was crowded but we managed. I took odd jobs. My brother was a bus driver. Then he died too, shot during a robbery, and we were evicted. My oldest son had moved to Ilhéus and was doing fine, but two were left, and then my nephew Vincente, who I was taking care of. We were without a roof over our heads, three young men and I. We stole some lumber, put together a few carts, and started collecting rags and boxes. That worked out too. There were four of us and we were strong.”
Anders Brant had heard this kind of story many times, in Brazil and in other countries. The details might differ, but the tragedy was the same.
People from near and far made their way to Salvador, hoping that the city would live up to its name, and save them from poverty and misery. The city grew beyond its limits, new favelas shot up like mushrooms from the ground, the misery was the same, but also the new arrivals’ hope for a better life.
“One day we found this place in the alley, an abandoned building, and we moved in. It was good, we had a roof over our heads. I even planted a tree on the slope outside. Maybe you’ve seen it, it’s five meters tall now. The only sad thing was that Arlindo started living a bad life. He brought a woman here, Luiza. She got pregnant and had a son, but he was born premature and died. He hit his woman. Maybe that was why the child left us. I was a grandfather for thirteen days.”
Brant refilled the beer glasses. The same procedure was repeated, when the foam had settled Ivaldo gulped down the beer, nodded, and continued his story.
“He did drugs and for a while he got his little brother and his cousin involved, but at last they got strength from God to say no.”
The old man fell silent. Anders Brant studied his facial features, marked by poverty and hard work, a person in this multimillion anthill, dark skinned, the descendant of slaves, born poor, without great demands on life. A man who had lost a son.
Anders Brant had an impulse to put his pale hand over Ivaldo’s dark one, but resisted it.
“Now my hope is with you,” said Ivaldo.
“How is that?”
“Vincente was reported. We thought you were the one who called the police, but it was a woman in the building on the other side. I recognize her, she always sits in the window and glares, and that’s what she was doing that evening too. She saw Vincente push his cousin, my son Arlindo, over the wall.”
“What should I do?” asked Anders Brant.
He sensed what the answer would be.
“You have to give false testimony,” said Ivaldo.
“And let Vincente go free?”
Ivaldo nodded.
“I won’t do it. I can’t lie about a thing like that. For a while I thought I was seeing things, but I saw what I saw. I chose not to tell, but don’t ask me to lie.”
“Were you afraid?”
Brant nodded.
“You don’t need to be. Arlindo cannot take revenge. And God understands.”
“This is not about God,” said Brant.
“It’s not?”
Anders Brant did not know how to get himself out of this dilemma. Discussing a conceivable God’s possible understanding was totally foreign to him, and starting to talk about laws and justice was almost tragicomic to a man who had never experienced any justice.
“Don’t you believe in God?”
Brant shook his head.
“Not in God, and not in paradise,” he said. “I am struggling for paradise here on earth.”
“The day after tomorrow you’re going to believe in hell anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re going to make an excursão, you and I,” said Ivaldo.
Brant was uncertain what the man meant by that word. He would translate it as “outing,” but did not understand the context, and it was so clearly marked on his face that Ivaldo thought it best to immediately tell him what this excursão would involve.
Thirty
She remembered how he brushed a strand of hair away from her face and then leaned over to give her a kiss on the forehead. And the aftershave, that he got from the children on his birthday.
That was the last thing, the touch and the smell. She could not remember whether he said anything; sometimes he did, before anyway, a few words to the effect that she could sleep awhile longer, that he would be back soon, or something more affectionate.
That was what she told the police too, that she was barely awake, but realized that he was leaving. It sounded so paltry. She would have preferred saying something else, above all more, a more rounded recollection, that they had made love, had breakfast together, that he was happy his trip would be short, perhaps something about the future, who they really were, what they could have been.
Then she took them out to the street, to the fence, and pointed at the knothole.
“This is how tall he is!”
They did not understand.
“The Russian!” she screamed. “He’s Russian! I know he’s a Russian. The whole thing is Oleg’s fault! The gas, that damn gas!”
Her voice was cutting. She struck the fence with her clenched fists as if to eradicate the figure who had been standing there twelve hours earlier. Beatrice put her hand on her shoulder.
Suddenly Henrietta caught a glimpse of Malin in the kitchen window. A rational thought broke through her confusion for a moment—thank the good Lord I did not tell her yesterday evening—and she freed herself from the female police officer who was trying to calm her, and ran into the house.
“That’s the daughter, we’ll give them a couple minutes,” said Beatrice. “And Fredriksson is in there.”
“Who is it that’s this tall?”
Sammy Nilsson did not like this. Standing on a street and not understanding a thing. They would soon have an answer to the question of who Henrietta Kumlin meant as she desperately struck her hand against the fence, he was sure of that. But all the other questions?
“It’s vacation time, damn it!” he exclaimed.
He would be spending a week kayaking with his crazy sister, who had barricaded herself in a little village in the inland of Västerbotten. No one understood why, but that’s where she wanted to live. The only way to see her was to go up there. And sitting in the isolated cabin, with barely enough space for one person, was inconceivable to Sammy; he got cabin fever at the mere thought of it. So they, or rather Sammy, decided they would spend a few days in a canoe, and his sister had unwillingly gone along with the arrangement.
“Do you have any idea how awkward it will be?”
Beatrice Andersson had been listening to his complaints without comment. In principle she was grateful that he was not taking advantage of the fact that his survey of the so-called bandy gang would now perhaps prove meaningful. There was probably a connection between Gränsberg, Brant, and now Jeremias Kumlin, not only as a lineup of team members on a twenty-year-old photo. It would be strange if this were only a coincidence.
“We don’t know yet,” she said anyway.
Sammy Nilsson stared at her uncomprehendingly, shook his head
, and then stomped back to the garage, where Eskil Ryde and Johannesson had just stepped in.
Beatrice Andersson understood that her colleague was tired, worn out; he really needed a week in the wilderness. She also understood what he meant by “awkward.” It would be complicated. Vacations would be lost, plans would have to be rearranged. Her own vacation was not planned to start for a month, but yet another case, with a probable connection to a previous homicide, an unfortunate ride down a staircase, and a journalist’s mysterious disappearance, all that combined would create chaos in the schedule.
Her own fatigue also made it hard to think, but there was no turning back because she understood that Henrietta Kumlin would be her assignment. This talk about Russians—and gas—was confusing to say the least, and she returned to the house to start unraveling.
* * *
Jeremias Kumlin was lying flat on his face, with his arms stretched out over the hood of his BMW, as if during the final seconds of his life he wanted to embrace the symbol of his success.
Sammy was standing in the half-open garage doorway. Two patrol officers had just finished cordoning off the lot and street, and Sammy and the field commander, Simlund, were discussing how they should arrange the door-to-door operation on the normally quiet street.
Ryde and Johannesson were working in silence. Sammy thought it was strange to see the “old man” at work once again, as if nothing would ever change. That thing about Ryde’s retirement was a joke, he had simply fooled them, and would outlive them all.
“How’s it look?”
Ryde looked up.
“He’s dead,” he said.
Sammy Nilsson nodded.
“Head bashed in.”
“I know, I saw him. Come on now!”
“You need to calm down.”
Sammy Nilsson knew that too.
“Don’t stand there stomping your feet!”
Sammy Nilsson left the garage door. A few neighbors farther down on the street were standing and talking, one of them in a bathrobe, although it was almost nine o’clock. A uniformed officer was on his way toward them and when they noticed the policeman they pulled back.
“Don’t let us disturb you,” Sammy Nilsson mumbled.
He walked restlessly down the street, a little fragment of an Uppsala he seldom or never visited. The well-adjusted, successful types lived here. So was there a connection between Gränsberg and Kumlin, more than the fact that both suffered a fatal skull fracture? He tried to recall what had been said during his and Kumlin’s brief phone conversation a few days ago. Nothing strange or startling he had thought then and could not, in light of what had now happened, come to any other conclusion. Kumlin had been surprised to be asked about an old photo, perhaps also a little irritated, but said nothing that aroused Sammy’s interest in the slightest and definitely nothing that would make anyone suspect that the businessman would meet such a fate.
Did the call trigger some activity on Kumlin’s part, perhaps a telephone call to someone else on the bandy team, which in turn led to his being murdered? Sammy Nilsson realized that he must have another discussion with the former teammates.
He stopped abruptly and raised one arm as if to keep a train of thought from disappearing. Had someone decided for some unfathomable reason to eradicate the whole bandy team, player by player? Was that why Anders Brant took off so hastily, that he realized he was in danger and fled the country? Or was it the case that Brant had returned from Madrid and was the one who bashed a pipe wrench into the back of Jeremias’s head?
Sammy Nilsson looked around as if the answers to his questions were to be found in the well-tended gardens in Sunnersta.
Suddenly a figure emerged from a bush only a few meters away and Sammy Nilsson instinctively reached for his gun which he wore in a shoulder holster—for once he was armed—but calmed himself immediately. A man stepped up to the fence toward the street.
“Birger Luthander,” he said.
They shook hands, Sammy Nilsson introduced himself and inspected the man. He was in his sixties, dressed only in a pair of Bermuda shorts; his upper body was bare and he had no shoes on.
“Something has happened, I understand. Is it the Kumlins?”
Sammy Nilsson hummed. He was a little irritated that his train of thought had been interrupted, perhaps a little embarrassed by his reaction.
“You looked so thoughtful, almost sad, if I may say so. Something terrible has happened, I thought right away. And I’m not surprised, I might add.”
“I see, what do you mean by that?”
“There’s been a little traffic on the street of a somewhat different nature than usual. Nothing good can come of this, I remember thinking.”
Do they have to talk like that, wondered Sammy.
“Traffic?”
“Yes, but I’m not referring to motor vehicles. I couldn’t help noticing, and I want to emphasize that I haven’t made any exertions. I’m not a curious person,” he quickly added. “But on several occasions, three to be exact, individuals have appeared on the street, individuals who do not belong to the customary picture of life in the area.”
“In brief: You’ve seen people who don’t live on the street.”
“Correct. The first occasion was maybe two weeks ago, and he also returned a few days later. And then yesterday, another visitor, this time it was a different man, but with an equally unfavorable appearance; I can’t say anything about his inner qualities. The fact was that it was my wife who brought my attention to the man; personally I was watching one of the many sports channels. Completely uninteresting. I definitely think it was some ball sport, you have no idea how quick Asians can be on their feet when it counts. I dismissed him as a peddler, mostly to calm my wife, who sometimes has a tendency to overreact, but the strange thing was that he stayed by Rosén’s fence—a not particularly esthetically pleasing construction, in my opinion—for at least two hours, without moving a muscle, in principle completely still, that alone a minor achievement. He was not Asian.”
“So what was he?”
“What do you mean?”
“What did he look like?”
“He might very well have been Swedish, but it would not surprise me if he had some foreign background. He was not dark-haired, but not blond either. I guess it’s called ash-blond. He was not wearing glasses.”
“Clothing?”
“Everyday, but to get details you’ll have to ask my wife. That’s her specialty.”
“Age?”
“Hard to determine, between forty and fifty.”
“Yes, that’s what we’re dealing with,” Sammy Nilsson murmured, thinking of the bandy team.
“Excuse me?”
“It was nothing. What makes you think that he might possibly come from abroad?”
“The whole impression,” said Birger firmly. “There was something vague about him, something old-fashioned, well, maybe it was the clothes? To the degree he moved it was also with a kind of uncertainty, maybe because he felt he didn’t belong here, which was also apparent.”
Birger Luthander, who behind all the verbosity proved to be an attentive and clear-sighted witness, except where clothing was concerned, could put words on the unknown man’s appearance and to some degree conduct. These were speculations, Sammy Nilsson realized, but it still gave him a good picture of the man who so stubbornly lingered by Rosén’s fence.
“If you want to speak with my wife, it’s fine to call her cell phone.”
Sammy Nilsson took out his phone. Luthander very slowly repeated the number digit by digit.
Mrs. Luthander, who introduced herself as Anita, could quite rightly account for the man’s dress: gym shoes, brown pants, and a green jacket that reached to his waist, and under that a dark shirt.
She added something too that Sammy Nilsson found interesting. Right before eight thirty the man disappeared, but Anita Luthander never saw him pass by their house. She thought that was peculiar as it was a dead-end street.
; Otherwise she confirmed her husband’s understanding. A foreigner, she summarized her impression.
Sammy thanked her for her help and they ended the conversation. In the meantime Birger Luthander had retrieved his business card, which he handed to Sammy.
Publisher Birger Luthander, PhD, he read on the card.
“What do you publish?”
“Mostly bridge books. Do you play bridge? And then a few odds and ends about scientists who have been wrong but right anyway.”
“That’s an area I’m very familiar with,” said Sammy Nilsson, amused at having met this curious character, partly for the testimony, but also because he helped change his own state of mind for the better.
“That was a thought,” said Birger Luthander and nodded, obviously content, as if he’d gotten an impulse for new writings.
* * *
It was four thirty before an initial summary could be made. A group of noticeably restless, tired police officers had gathered. There was starting to be a shortage of prosecutors too, because even if the prosecutor’s office had been spared the stubborn summertime flu that struck the police, several were on vacation and those who were left in the building were all loaded with cases. It was the sanguine Åke Hällström who was assigned the Kumlin murder. And this balanced the gloomy atmosphere somewhat, because even though he too had a heavy workload and was a little confused at the moment, he was endowed with an unusually easygoing temperament for the building.
“Go over that again,” said Hällström. “Kumlin’s wife maintains that it was a Russian, but has nothing to back that up?”
“No,” said Beatrice Andersson. “She explains it by her husband’s business deals in Russia, that he might have felt threatened.”
“Was there an explicit threat?”
“Not that she knew of.”
“Strange,” said Hällström.
But Beatrice Andersson did not think so at all. She had listened to Henrietta Kumlin’s story, about the constant trips to Moscow and some place farther east, the name of which she could not remember, and about Jeremias’s worry, which had increased recently. And then this Oleg Fedotov, who to Henrietta was clearly the image of evil incarnate.
Black Lies, Red Blood: A Mystery Page 21
