“Practical matters, backup.”
This was different from Uncle Lennart’s petty gangsters, Justus understood that. He tried to make eye contact with Erland, but he seemed completely knocked out where he was reclined on the sofa.
“Can you make coffee,” the leader said.
“Was that a question or an order?”
“Now you’re starting to understand. Make coffee and keep your mouth shut for a while.”
“Unexpected company,” Justus said, going into the kitchen, which was directly connected to the living room. He took out the can of coffee and filters. He seldom drank coffee late in the afternoon or early evening, but now a cup was needed. He slowly filled the carafe with water while he looked for the phone. It was between the paper towel holder and the bread basket, and he reached out his hand and entered the code.
“Get going,” he heard the other man’s voice.
“Nyström, is that your name? Do you live in Uppsala?”
“Shut up.”
“I know a couple of Nyströms.”
Ten cups, he had never made that much before. The can was almost out of coffee. He opened the cupboard above the stove, rooted around, and found half a kilo of Zoegas Intenzo, at the same time as he managed to produce Lindell’s number with his other hand.
“Only the best is good enough,” he said and looked at Nyström over his shoulder, holding up the package.
“No knives,” said Nyström.
Justus smiled and opened the package like he always did, with a tug. Out came a delightful aroma that he associated with early mornings and Little John. In contrast to Berit, they were morning persons. At the kitchen table they could talk about cichlids and anything that had to do with aquariums. They dreamed a little. About Africa. About the lakes in Africa, about the fish in the lakes of Africa.
“What the hell,” said Nyström. Justus tipped the coffee into the can. He still hadn’t had a chance to tap in the number. Instead he had to measure coffee into the filter under supervision and turn on the coffee maker. He was a prisoner in his own home. Captured by three terrorists. He leaned against the kitchen counter, hid his face with an open hand, as if he was struck by great despair. The other hand rested on the counter. The coffee maker started gurgling. What would they do in Uppsala? Blow something up? The mosque, maybe. If he remembered right it was the world’s northernmost and had suffered some damage but nothing really serious.
“Are you all hungry?”
Nyström made a dismissive motion with one hand. Justus saw that two fingers were missing. “What happened to your hand?”
“Taliban,” said Nyström.
“Ask Erland if he still takes milk in his coffee.”
Nyström turned his head. That gave Justus the opportunity he’d been waiting for. He entered Lindell’s number, saw that the call was connected.
“He never takes milk in his coffee, he says.”
“Of course he does,” said Justus. “Erland is a little senile,” he continued, in a ridiculously loud voice, as if he wanted Erland to hear his banter. “That’s why he associates with bombers like you all.”
The question was whether she answered the call and heard his jabbering, but there was not much to choose from, so he continued.
“But what the hell, come home with me! Stay for two days. What the hell are you going to blow up? The mosque? You probably hate Muslims, huh? When were you in Afghanistan, Nyström?”
“Forget about that!”
The coffee maker let out one last death rattle. “And that Give, he seems more than disturbed.” Nyström smiled.
Justus took down three mugs from the hooks under the kitchen cabinet, Moomin mugs that he got from Berit. He knew that she longed for a grandchild, maybe she believed that the Moomin motif in some unknown way would get him to start thinking about that himself.
It struck him that he would die in the apartment; there wouldn’t be any Li’l Justus. What would they do when it was all over, when the mission was completed? Leave the city, of course, but leaving a witness behind was not a bright idea. He poured coffee, gave Nyström a mug, and took the two others with him to the living room.
Erland had fallen asleep on the sofa. Justus set the mug on the low teak table that Little John had bought once, and which now was stained by numerous rings from glasses and cups. He gave the other mug to Give.
“You’re a bullshitter,” said Give, but smiled when he saw Little My’s gloomy expression.
“I think I’ll have a cup myself,” said Justus.
Erland had woken up, and reached for the coffee. “I’ve probably never had milk in my coffee.” His voice was creaky like an old man’s. Justus returned to the kitchen and unhooked the mug with Snufkin.
The call was ended. He stood there, resumed his pose with his hand in front of his face, tapped in a new call.
“What the hell is it with you!” Nyström had followed him and was standing in the doorway.
“I’m so fucking tired,” said Justus. “Tired of violence and evil. What are you going to blow up?”
“A square, of course,” said Nyström. “Vaksala, isn’t that what it’s called?”
“Vaksala Square on a Saturday! Is that why you’re going to camp out here? You’re out of your damned minds. It’s Saturday market then. Any number of people.”
Nyström sipped his coffee.
“You’re going to kill however many people! Vaksala Square on a Saturday! Many people are going to die!” Justus screamed, leaning over the kitchen counter and taking the opportunity to click off the phone and put it in his back pocket.
Fifty-Eight
Everything proceeded calmly. Resigned and quite passive, Rasmus Rönn was sitting at the kitchen table at Sebastian’s place when two dozen police officers crowded into the house from three directions. One group had made their way up to the top floor by means of the scaffolding, and another had climbed in through a window in the old parlor where old man Ottosson had spent most of his time in recent years, a room his grandchild had so far not touched. A third group made use of the front door, which in the summer heat was wide open.
It was as if he’d been waiting to be picked up by the police. He had even just taken a shower and looked considerably fresher than the last time Sammy Nilsson saw him. He observed with enormous satisfaction how a couple of uniformed colleagues forced Rasmus up in a standing position and locked his arms behind his back. Sammy had an impulse to give him a sock in the jaw, but this wasn’t an arrest in Alabama or Rio, instead in a village hole on the edge of nowhere.
Then he remembered what Ann had said after she’d been living in the village for six months: Tilltorp and Gimo are the center of the world, do you understand that? He didn’t then, but now he was starting to sense what that might mean.
“You mustn’t shove policemen, it always ends in handcuffs” was the only thing Sammy said in Ottosson’s kitchen. Rasmus did not condescend to look at him. Sammy followed them out, saw how ungently he was stuffed into a van that had driven up. The back end of an ambulance disappeared in the birch grove that surrounded the highway north. A group of policemen stood by the old schoolyard. One of them pointed at the blackened chimney. Ann stood together with Bertil Efraimsson outside his house, and witnessed the undramatic resolution. Sebastian Ottosson was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he was still hanging around at the creamery. Rasmus Rönn would be reunited with his brother in jail.
* * *
Sammy leaned against the scaffolding, waved to Ann. His brain felt completely empty. He called the hospital again. Nils Stolpe was alive, but he could not understand much more than that from the strained formulations. He had asked to speak with Stolpe Junior, but it couldn’t be arranged. The thought was that perhaps he could tell his father what had happened.
How to continue? Rasmus Rönn’s companion was wanted. According to Bodin, who had visited Stefan’s father, Allan Sanberg had no idea where his son might be. Should Sammy go there too? Sanberg lived half a kilometer away. Should he go in sea
rch of Andreas Mattsson? Sammy had tried to reach him several times, left voice messages on his phone and sent texts. The information that Andreas had said that it was Sam Rothe who killed his brother was sensational to say the least. It was an admission that during the night he left Therese in Östhammar and was outside the smithy when it burned.
Was that correct, or simply a way to push the guilt onto the defenseless Rothe? Sammy stood up slowly. The technicians had arrived and would start working in Ottosson’s house. What was there to search for? Sammy wondered. Traces of a murder that happened several kilometers away? Had Rasmus dragged something with him from Rothe’s, a souvenir from a successful lynching? Probably not. But it was a routine measure, nothing could be ruled out.
Sammy wanted to get away. He had a lot of paperwork to do of course, the sooner that happened the better, but did he have the energy to go to the police station and the computer there? He said hello to Evelina, one of the few female crime scene investigators. He thought he saw some sympathy in her eyes, but it was probably just imagination.
At that moment his phone vibrated. Incoming call. Andreas Mattsson.
“I heard that you’re at Ottosson’s,” he started without any further ado. How he’d heard that was unclear, maybe Bertil Efraimsson had called and told him. “You wanted to talk.”
“Where are you?”
“In the truck, on the way to Lyan with a load of dirt.”
“Come here.”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes, and in Tilltorp in half an hour” was the driver’s optimistic plan.
“We’ll meet at Hamra,” said Sammy. “It’s good that you called,” he added, grateful that any communication had functioned. “Do you have any idea where Stefan Sanberg may be staying?”
“Not a clue.”
* * *
He walked over to the neighboring lot. Ann was smiling. Bertil observed him seriously. “Is this the center of the world?”
Bertil made a gesture that could mean: Sure, it is.
“I just spoke with your son,” said Sammy, who in some way wanted to poke a hole in the workshop owner’s liberal wall of probity. Naturally it didn’t work. “He was at the farm the night the smithy burned.”
“Yes, he told me just that. He wanted to talk with his brother.”
“Half brother. And it went the way it did.”
“You seem worn out,” said Ann, and in that moment Sammy despised her supposed concern about his condition.
“Then he blamed Sam Rothe and sent that poor guy to his death.”
“He wanted to talk with Daniel, not kill him,” said Bertil.
Sammy turned away. He’d had it up to here with the village. How the hell could she live here? He left the two, walked to the car. He ought to exchange a word with Stefan Sanberg’s parents.
Could he call Therese? Angelika? Was it there, in desire, in the need for intimacy and oblivion, that the answer was found? The tired hormones, and the once so proud and unreal plans about life itself, carried on an unequal struggle against the ennui in a worn, aging body. He was fumbling for answers.
* * *
Allan Sanberg was sitting in the kitchen. On the table was a cup of coffee that said WORLD’S BEST DAD. Beside it was a copy of Aftonbladet. “Yeah, I buy that rag out of old habit.” The headline concerned someone who had lost seventy-two kilos. He looked tired, in that reflective, indolent way that physical laborers do after a long day, after a long week, after a whole life of physical work.
“That little shit is not too bright,” he summarized.
“It doesn’t look good,” said Sammy.
“Mom is going to grieve herself to death. How can I tell her? Do you really think he was involved in setting the fire?”
“Looks that way.”
“And then, that Rothe? Was Stefan there?”
Sammy nodded. “He bragged about it.” There was no sense in cushioning the words, or using euphemisms. Allan would not go for such talk.
“When he was in his early teens I used to show him pictures. Mom had put together an album with things from the past. So that he would understand. My parents were heroes, do you get that? Personally I’ve cheated my way ahead.”
“I’ve heard that you’re a good craftsman.”
“That’s not so hard. It’s just a matter of cleaning up after yourself. Now she’ll have to hear that her grandchild set fire to the school she once attended. I did too. And the boy for a couple of years.”
“You’re most worried about his grandmother?”
“Yes, actually. She had dreams. I just wanted to work and make money. That’s different, you know.”
Sammy thought he understood the homespun philosophy.
“How many years will he get?”
“At least ten,” Sammy guessed.
“I see. Would you like some coffee?”
“That would be nice.”
Sammy glanced at the clock. Soon Andreas Mattsson would show up.
“He’s missing something. We haven’t been able to give him sense.”
“I think you’ve done what you could,” said Sammy, who felt a need to console the mournful figure who drank his coffee and read his paper in the kitchen he’d sat in for decades, his whole life really.
“Do you know a girl in Österby named Madeleine?”
“Stefan said something, but I don’t know a thing about her. I think they met a couple of weeks ago.”
“Maybe he’s there,” Sammy thought out loud.
“I’ve always voted for the Social Democrats,” Allan Sanberg said unprompted. “It’s been tradition. When I was a lad we marched in parades and that. Red banners. Once my father spoke in Gimo. He was in the road workers’ union. It was the laborers who started it, but that was a long time ago, of course. People listened to the old man. He had a voice. Sometimes I still meet people who remember.”
“I’ve voted for the Social Democrats too.”
“A cop?”
“Yes, there are a few of us. Not many, but still. I got it from home. Also.”
Sanberg gave him a look that was hard to interpret. Then tears started running down his cheeks. He just sat there and cried, did nothing to hide it or dry the tears. It was a frightening sight. Teardrops landed on the headlines of the tabloid.
“That business about cleaning up after yourself, what does that mean?”
“When you do a job, well or poorly executed, you have to clean up after yourself, pick up all the scrap, wipe off, sweep, and such. That’s the sort of thing people notice. The rest maybe they don’t understand that much, but if it looks tidy afterward then they’re satisfied.”
* * *
Andreas Mattsson drove his vehicle with great skill, a truck with a trailer. He backed up next to a storage building, turned off the motor, and got down from the cabin. These were practiced movements.
Sammy was sitting in the same garden chair at Hamra farm as before, where he and Bodin met Andreas the first time. He stood up, they shook hands, then sat down as if they were two chess players who had finally agreed on the conditions for a first match in a series that would decide the master’s title. But there was no chess clock on the table, only a tape recorder. Andreas did not comment on that.
“What did you see that night?” Sammy asked, making a motion in the direction of where the smithy had once been. It was an offensive introduction, which didn’t allow any objections or chitchat.
“I was at the farm office, and saw how it was on fire. It was actually a beautiful sight between the trees. Suddenly a figure shows up at the edge of the forest. He ran like a lunatic, right into where we have wood piled, I’m sure you’ve seen it.”
Sammy hadn’t, but he nodded.
“Who was it?”
“No one I recognized. This happened quickly too, and the smithy was burning. It was completely in flames, it could be seen from far off. I opened the window and jumped out from the office and started running. Then I caught sight of Daniel, he more or less crawled, stumble
d along. Farther up, toward the road that we use for old pastures, another figure shows up. I recognized him immediately. It was so fucking improbable.”
“Who?”
“Sam Rothe.”
“You know that it was him?”
“He is, was, a couple of years younger than me. We’ve met quite a few times. He is just standing there, I don’t think Daniel sees him, and when he comes closer there’s an argument. I remember thinking: Now you’re going to get a beating. Daniel could be really rough when he was scared. But it was the other way around. Sam swings something at him and Daniel collapses. Clubbed down.”
Andreas fingered the tape recorder.
“Don’t turn it off.”
“Okay then.”
“Did he die immediately?”
“I think so. The branch had penetrated his skull. Through the eye.”
“What did you do?”
“I pulled out the branch.”
“And…?”
“I saw the lights from a car across the field, and understood that someone was coming, someone who had seen the fire. I thought it was Bertil. Never that the carpenter would show up.”
“Why is that?”
“His mother died in a fire. That’s what they say anyway.”
“But it was Ann Lindell who came,” Sammy observed.
“I found that out later.”
“We didn’t find a branch.”
“I took it with me. I had it in my hand when I ran to the car. I just took it with me.”
“You threw it away?”
Andreas shook his head. “No, it’s at Therese’s, in her shed. I don’t know why I didn’t throw it out the window on the road, but it was lying in the car, and then I had to hide it somewhere.”
“What kind of branch?”
“Pine.”
Sammy had a vague memory of a green-painted building on Therese’s lot. Andreas described where in the shed he had stowed away the branch that killed his brother. He did it without showing any emotion, as if he were recounting something ordinary and trivial. In general his speech was marked by a dry factuality, something that Sammy had sometimes noticed during interviews. The common denominator was that those being questioned with this appearance demonstrated a marked strength of will, often combined with grandiose self-esteem.
The Night of the Fire: A Mystery Page 35
