The school property was burned and deserted. Sammy saw it as a symbol for what was happening in Sweden. It was as if a gang of arsonists was advancing across the country.
His thoughts were spinning. “I’m starting to go crazy,” he mumbled. “I’m starting to punish myself.” Suddenly he understood that he had to rise up out of the apathy he had lived with so long. He missed so much. So much was missing. I’ll buy a lottery ticket, win a fortune, and become Ann’s neighbor, retire, he thought. Bertil could teach him to weld, something Sammy had wanted for years. He could help the goat farmer put down posts. And Angelika? He opened the car door. And Angelika? I don’t love you anymore.
Forty-One
Rasmus Rönn had not boarded the plane that should have taken him to Thailand. Bodin sounded pleased when he said that. Björn Rönn had looked genuinely surprised when he was asked why his brother hadn’t checked in. Bodin babbled on. Sammy hummed.
“Maybe Rasmus was involved in Hökarängen,” Bodin speculated.
“That may be.”
“Maybe he got cold feet and thought we would bring him in at Arlanda.”
Sammy stood leaning against the car. He had just finished a call with Angelika in Denmark. It was all over, that was clear. She wanted a divorce. It felt like falling into the sea in November.
“Or else he didn’t want to take off alone. Hello?” Bodin yammered. “Are you there?”
“Yes, just thinking,” said Sammy.
“Just don’t think too long, then maybe there’ll be time for another explosion.”
“I’m in the middle of something, I’ll call you later,” Sammy said and simply clicked away the call.
* * *
Sammy slowly walked around the school property, indecisive, hesitant, as if he’d suddenly realized that he was missing something essential but couldn’t grasp what it might be. Was it something Angelika had said, was it about Rasmus Rönn, or what? A motorcycle thundered past. The speed and noise decimated the rural peace and shook him out of his paralysis. He saw the driver’s bent back and the way he leaned into the curve that led toward Lindell’s house. Sammy wished that he could move ahead like that, put everything behind him.
He stood there knowing that he was being observed, surely by Sebastian, perhaps by Bertil Efraimsson, but it didn’t bother him that he openly demonstrated his slowness, his dithering. He knew that a resolution was not far off. He didn’t base that on any solid facts, but on a feeling. He knew from before that a sneaking insight in a difficult investigation always made him worried and a little doubtful, like a confused older person. It was as if he needed the disorder before everything could be sorted out in the right sequence. It reminded him of a summer job he’d had as an assistant mail carrier, the disarray with all the letters, cards, and bulk mail before everything was in the right compartment, the supervisor’s raspy voice in the loudspeaker, and it was time to depart, the liberation of getting to straddle the bicycle and pedal away to his route.
It struck him that this was why it was so hard to live with him. And Lindell! It occurred to him a moment later. They were children of the same spirit, so often, much too often, with their thoughts somewhere else, on their way somewhere, many times with an uncertain destination, two target-seeking robots with an unforeseeable path.
The job as a detective inspector had taken hold of him, like a predator tearing his body and mind to pieces. Now he, and Angelika, had to pay the price. He shook his head as if to be rid of the insight, but also knew inside that there was no alternative. Or was there? This was him, Sammy Nilsson, for good and bad. He had met hundreds of enterprising colleagues, grindingly boring, but effective, systematically predictable, often blissfully unaware of their healthy capacity to separate work and free time. Perhaps Bodin was one of them. Berglund had been something in between.
“I am who I am,” Sammy mumbled, unimaginatively and doggedly, a culprit’s feeble defense.
“First and foremost: Forget Hökarängen,” he encouraged himself. “Others have to solve that. It’s this peasant hole that’s your job.”
He looked around, let the thought sink in, returned to the car and drove off, passed Lindell’s house without a glance. “The smithy,” he mumbled, but drove past the lane to Hamra, and turned instead onto the road toward the farm where Sam Rothe was living.
It was silent there. As if a neutron bomb had fallen and eliminated all life. Not a single rabbit, not a single colorful or cantankerous duck. The dovecote was deserted. Aviaries were open. A few paper bags that perhaps had contained feed blew past. A wire gate was swinging back and forth in a monotonous rhythm. Sammy hooked it shut.
“Sam!” he called, and it felt a little strange, like searching for yourself. He got a reply in a drawn-out bellow. He understood that it was the donkey, which had greeted him the same way at the previous visit. It came plodding between two sheds, followed by Sam Rothe. He was dressed in light green overall, at least a few sizes too big, and for that reason made a pitiful impression.
“Do you have a gun?”
“Where are the animals?”
“I’ve sold them. Most of ’em. Some I let out, mostly doves, species that can survive here. Can you shoot Ares? No one wants a donkey.”
“That’s probably not legal,” said Sammy.
“People put down their dogs and cats when they get too old or sick. There can’t very well be any difference with a donkey. Or what do you think? You’re the law, after all.” Rothe sounded cantankerous.
“Why is he called Ares?”
“He was called that when I bought him. It means war god.”
“He doesn’t look that warlike.”
“He’s sad. All his friends are gone.”
“You want to shoot a donkey because it’s depressed,” Sammy observed.
“Shoot me too.”
“Can’t it go around and graze among the cows?”
“Have you seen any cows around here? Or livestock? Everything is shut down.”
“Would goats be okay?”
Rothe didn’t think so. “Ares is too nice.” Sammy tried to get him to drop the thought of the depressed war god, and asked who had bought the other animals. Rothe told about his contacts, especially the rabbit club and the local association for birds. This was an unknown world to Sammy, and perhaps he was not all that interested, but he let Rothe talk on, it surely did him good.
“I’ve got a good reputation, they know that my animals are healthy. I’ve bred parrots, mostly gray parrots and cockatoos, all with breeding certificate, in case you’re wondering.”
“I’m not wondering about anything,” said Sammy, who found the whole thing increasingly absurd. “Why are you getting rid of everything?” he asked.
Rothe refused to talk any more about his deserted farm and how he imagined his future. Surrounding himself with animals had been his life, Sammy understood that. Now he was alone. He had no family to speak of. No neighbors. The rabbit club’s members would probably come to visit less and less often.
He needs help, professional help, Sammy thought when he saw the lost little man in his outsized overall. But nonetheless he couldn’t keep from pressuring him a little.
“I think you know where Omid is.”
Rothe stared stubbornly down at the ground.
“He’s no rabbit that you can sell or a donkey you can shoot. He’s a young person who’s in trouble right now. Help out and rescue him,” Sammy continued. It didn’t appear to bite. Rothe had perhaps experienced too little empathy and consideration to be impressed by Sammy’s argument. He had gained the animals’ trust and given them love in return. “You helped him before.”
“Then there was snow,” said Rothe. “And now I’m going to move,” he interrupted Sammy’s further attempt. “I have to. They’re going to sell this too.”
“Who?”
“Mom and Kalle.”
“So they’re the ones who own—”
“They bought this ’cause they wanted to get rid of me.
Now they’re going to leave Sweden and need money.”
Sammy was struck by the cruelty in the mother and stepfather’s behavior. They knocked the legs out from under Sam, surely they understood that. Where would he go? He’d been able to live cheaply at the Rabbit Den, breed and sell animals, he had a place, he had contact with other nerds. And now?
“Damn, how sad,” he said.
“Shoot me too,” Rothe sobbed. “It doesn’t matter if I live or die. Why should we live and be tormented? You’ve hunted him like an animal.”
“Who do you mean?”
“Omid.”
“As far as I’m concerned they can gladly stop.”
The donkey screeched. Rothe responded with a movement of his arm and a clicking sound. Ares moved away a little and started frantically tearing at grass and plants, which grew lushly around the abandoned pond. Could he shoot the war god Ares? No, he didn’t think so.
“Humans are strange animals,” said Sammy.
“Omid probably isn’t around anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s probably dead. He said that he came here to remind me about how everything … I don’t remember what he said, but he got so depressed. He talked about bad people.”
“Do you think he committed suicide?”
Rothe did not answer immediately. It looked as if he was digging in his memory, and Sammy waited him out.
“I don’t know, when he couldn’t live in the cellar any longer he just disappeared.”
“He hid in the village,” said Sammy. “Someone helped him.”
“Who was that?”
Sammy pretended not to hear the question. “He came here a while ago, is that right?”
Rothe was getting ready to formulate a lie, Sammy saw that immediately.
“Is he here now?”
Rothe shook his head.
“Did he set fire to the smithy, do you think?”
“I don’t want to talk with you anymore.”
And why am I talking with you? thought Sammy. We’re not getting anywhere; on the contrary, I’m just getting depressed. There was something unpleasant about Rothe. Sammy did not want to believe that it was due to his emaciated appearance and often half-witted image, but rather an increasing irritation at the unrelieved dissatisfaction that marked his whining and suffocating pleading for sympathy. Get away, Sammy wanted to exclaim, help yourself, you zero, don’t blame others all the time! But he regretted it every time those thoughts bubbled up. The rabbit man had all the odds against him, probably always had. How much love and understanding did he get while he was growing up?
Sammy walked slowly toward the car. It was probably the last time he would visit the farm, perhaps he would never see Sam Rothe again. It was like signing a report, setting it on top of a bundle of papers, closing the folder to then send it into the archive of oblivion. Now it didn’t work out that way, a lot was handled electronically, everything could be brought up on a screen in seconds with a few taps, but Sammy liked the image of dusty file cabinets in a cellar far down in the underworld, where the text slowly faded.
He brought his hands to his face, held them there, as if to hide himself from the world or perhaps to rub away the images of dreariness and misery. His palms gave off a foreign smell, almond perhaps, something moisturizing, creamy white, but also mildly spicy. Where did it come from? It felt peculiar in the context, shouldn’t he smell like farm and donkey? Was it a memory from Jutland, wasn’t this the way Angelika smelled at one time? Didn’t she have a cream, maybe a perfume, when spiciness was popular? Musk, was that what it was called? He knew that he was on the wrong track, but he liked the word as such, short and mysterious. He associated it with bodies.
Or was it Therese in Östhammar who through a synapse in his brain reminded him of the vague promises they had given one another?
Then it came to him how it fit together. It must be the flower baskets he unconsciously rubbed against on the school property that deposited their scent traces, and which were able to eliminate the faint but clearly identifiable reminiscence of arson. The next image that fluttered past in his brain was the memory of Ann crouching in her flower bed. She was slowly but surely creating a world for herself. It felt both good and bad to him to think that. Good, because she was the closest to a dear friend he had; bad, because she was leaving him behind. He was still stuck in a life he should have left long ago, she in her idyll, with cheese and flowers and now perhaps also an Edvard, heavy and boring to be sure but like an extended pier against a high sea.
He looked around. Rothe was still standing there, with the donkey’s heavy head close to him, as if they were exchanging secrets in a whisper. The rabbit man observed him with a puzzled, indolent expression on his thin face. How pale he is, it struck Sammy, even though he lives here, as if the sun doesn’t shine on him.
“Listen!” Sammy shouted. “Ask Omid to come out, so we can talk.”
He didn’t know where the impulse came from. Rothe remained on the same spot, only the donkey reacted with a bellow. Sammy waited. He knew deep down that the Afghan was hiding in the house. Where could he have gone otherwise after he disappeared from Bertil Efraimsson?
A window opened. There he stood, a dozen meters away. They looked at one another. He looked different from what Sammy had imagined, older, more robust. Perhaps it was the beard that contributed to that impression? His face was otherwise neutral, with a stiffness in the features that Sammy recognized from interview rooms at the police station.
Now Sammy would get answers to some of his many questions. Omid wanted to talk.
Forty-Two
Forest croft, he thought. That was before. Then there really was a forest. What now surrounded the road up to the little red cabin was a plantation, spruces perhaps forty years old stood in straight rows in a gigantic parade. Branches caressed the pickup’s roof and windows with an eerie rasping sound. It was dark, even though the sun was shining. There was nothing of value besides a certain amount of cubic meters of timber, which was still too little to justify a final logging. Perhaps it would wait for just as many more years, if a powerful storm didn’t sweep in and transform it all into gigantic jackstraws before then.
The house had once been the center of new cultivation from the mid-nineteenth century, and over fifty years ago the small parcels were still being worked by one Albin Pettersson and his family. Erland Edman had read about that on a small plaque that was hanging above the sideboard in the little room. The old gray Ferguson tractor, which the crofter Pettersson was able to buy in the early fifties, still stood in a shed. Björn Rönn claimed that he’d gotten it started. The present owner, a distant relative of the last farmer, had moved to Henderson, a little town somewhere in the southern United States, Erland didn’t remember which state, because Björn had been unexpectedly verbose when they visited the place together the first time. How Björn knew him he didn’t know either. Perhaps it was just as well. He wanted to know as little as possible. In any event they had access to the house, which they called “the Cape,” and they would not be disturbed. The nearest neighbor was kilometers away.
There was only one access route, the narrow road, which was blocked by a locked boom. That was both good and bad, in Erland’s opinion. Every time he left the hiding place he placed a slender thread straight across the road about five hundred meters from the cabin. If someone were to make their way around the boom and approach the house in a car the thread would break, or in any case be pressed down into the ground. So far this hadn’t happened. A drawback was that he was caught in a dead end. Björn and he had examined the possibilities of clearing a provisional road out to the forest road in the vicinity, but it was too extensive a project to get started, and perhaps not that smart either, as it was too conspicuous.
If the police or any other unwelcome party were to show up, then you could simply go into the forest. They had placed a lightweight motorcycle behind the woodshed to enable a quick retreat. Erland had kick-started it m
ore than once to take a short test drive, most recently on Saturday when the news about Hökarängen was broadcast. Would he ever be forced to take off on the thirty-five-year-old Yamaha dirt bike?
He drove the car into the shed and locked up after himself. The loneliness that he felt came not only from the fact that the silence was deafening. No birds seemed to thrive in the monotonous environment. “There are probably plenty of Russulas in the fall,” Give had said with a grin. How could he know about such things, and who could socialize with mushrooms? Above all he missed Li’l Erland. He’d told his wife that he had a temporary job in Landskrona that he couldn’t say no to. It was a lie with some plausibility to it. An old buddy, whom Mirjam despised and for that reason would never contact, had run a successful company for many years providing scaffolding and construction-site facilities. Erland had helped him before, and he was familiar with Landskrona and the surrounding area and could lie credibly about his stay in the south.
If only I was in Skåne, he thought. He had toyed with the thought of going away, but now it was too late, he was hopelessly stuck. They had decided that everyone in the group would go underground. Only Björn had refused, and how did that work out for him, Give had asked. “Stay there in the cabin. We’ll lie low. It will blow over.”
Blow over? As if this concerned a minor assault or a robbery. People had died, Swedes had died, a little boy had died. It would not be forgotten. Especially not if Give continued with Alby and other squares he talked about.
Erland Edman wondered whether he could be stopped. That was the thought that was grinding in his skull. Give had Olsson, if that was really his name, and Jimmy Nyström. Olsson seemed a little crazy and Jimmy would never be budged. After coming home from Afghanistan he was a different person. Erland thought Jimmy needed professional help. Instead he had taken off for another tour. Don’t they have psychologists in the military? You could see just by looking at him that he was cracked in the head.
The Night of the Fire: A Mystery Page 28
