The princess of Burundi (18 page)

Fredriksson thought hard. He turned and looked at the neighbor’s door.
M
.
ANDERSSON
was inscribed on the mail slot. He rang the bell. A woman opened immediately, as if she had been waiting with her hand on the door handle. She was around seventy years of age, with long white hair, braided and pinned in a knot. The hand on the door handle was thin, with large swollen blue veins.

He introduced himself and said he was looking for Vivan Molin.

“Something’s not right,” she said immediately.

“How do you mean?”

“There were such strange sounds this morning. And a man came by last night.”

“At what time did you hear these sounds?”

“Around eleven. I was finishing the Christmas spare ribs—I’m going to Kristinehamn this afternoon. He was out there shouting on the street.”

“What did he look like?”

“I didn’t see him so well. He was wearing a hat. Vivan let him in.”

“Vivan went down and opened the front door?”

“Yes, it is locked at nine.”

“These sounds you were talking about, what did they sound like?”

“Like screams. Something has happened. I almost called the police but I didn’t know if I should get involved in other people’s business.”

“How well do you know Vivan? Does she often have visitors in the evening?”

“No, never. This part of the building is very quiet.”

“Does she go to work?”

“No, she’s on disability. She was burned out, I think they call it.”

Fredriksson thanked her for the information and went down to the street. He made a call to the station and eight minutes later a patrol car pulled up. A van from the locksmith company Pettersson & Barr pulled up right behind them. The locksmith was a young man with Rastafarian braids, hardly more than twenty.

Fredriksson and his colleagues discussed their options. If Vincent Hahn was in the apartment he could very well be armed. It was doubtful that he would have access to firearms, more likely a knife or other object.

The Rastafarian locksmith worked on the lock for about thirty seconds. He whistled as he worked and Fredriksson asked him to be quiet.

“Cool,” he said. “Are you Sweden’s answer to Carella?”

Fredriksson had no idea what he was talking about, but nodded. Slättbrant, famous among his colleagues for his implacability, opened the door.

“Police!” he shouted before going in. “Anyone home?”

Silence.

“Torsten Slättbrant from the police. I’m coming in.”

He forced the door all the way open and stepped into the apartment, his gun in his left hand. He took another step while looking at what Fredriksson assumed was the kitchen door. Then he stood quietly for ten seconds, as if testing the air like a hunting dog.

Slättbrant looked back and shook his head.

“Is anyone home?” he shouted again, and Fredriksson felt impatient.

“Heavy, man,” said the Rastafarian, and Fredriksson gestured for him to stay back.

“You’re no Carella,” the young man said again and walked down half a flight of stairs.

“There’s a woman under the bed in the bedroom,” said Göthe, the other officer. Fredriksson nodded as if he already knew this.

“Strangled, I think,” said Göthe. The young locksmith appeared behind him and craned his head forward.

“Get lost!” Fredriksson shouted.

“Can we strike Hahn from the Little John case?” Ottosson’s question hung in the air among the assembled officers for a few seconds. One of the overhead fluorescent lights was flickering and underscored the anxious atmosphere.

“Can’t we have that light fixed?” Sammy Nilsson asked.

“I, for one, don’t believe in the connection for a second,” Fredriksson said. “Hahn’s profile is totally different. You’ve seen his correspondence, a misanthrope with a twisted worldview. I read one letter he wrote to the transit authorities where he proposed a special immigrant bus so that ethnic Swedes wouldn’t have to associate with foreign scum, as he put it. I think his being John’s former classmate is pure coincidence.”

“I’m not so sure,” Sammy said. “We can drop the question of motive here. This guy is a nut case and simply did something on impulse. Maybe he bumped into John, recognized him from their school days. Maybe something had happened between them a long time ago and it led to a confrontation.”

“But where would such a confrontation have taken place?” Morenius said. “On Vaksalagatan downtown where John waited for the bus? Where did the murder, not to mention the torture, actually occur, and how did Hahn transport the body to Libro?”

Morenius shook his head.

“We know very little about Hahn,” Sammy said. “Maybe he had access to another apartment, maybe even to a car. We haven’t actually met a single person yet who knew him and could tell us how he spends his days.”

Ottosson scratched his head.

“I think we can disregard Hahn for now,” he said, but he did not sound entirely convinced.

“Little John’s killer is one of these poker players or someone else who keeps to society’s fringes,” Berglund said.

“We have to proceed with open minds,” Ottosson said. “Not lose the tempo. It’s very easy to lose one’s focus, even unintentionally.”

“Okay,” Haver said. “Eight guys, excluding John, were there that night. Ljusnemark gave us all the names. Four of them, plus Ljusnemark, have been questioned today. That leaves three remaining. One of them is abroad, possibly in Holland. His mother lives there. One has disappeared from the face of the earth, and the third is Mossa, the Iranian, whom we all know and who appears to be out of town for the moment. We have talked to his brother and mother, who live here.”

“Who is the one in Holland?”

“Dick Lindström.”

“The one with the teeth?”

Haver nodded.

“And who is the person who has disappeared from the face of the earth, as you put it?”

“One Allan Gustav Rosengren. He has the nickname The Lip. He’s been convicted twice of trafficking in stolen goods. The last time was five years ago. He has no permanent address. The last one is in Mälarhöjden two years ago when he was renting a room from an old lady. He moved out and since then he has disappeared from all sources.”

“One with teeth, and one with a lip,” Riis said.

“Can we rule out Ljusnemark?” Morenius asked.

“I think so,” Haver said. “Too much of a coward. I can’t see him cutting off a finger.”

“You’re assuming the motive is money?”

“Gambling debts don’t seem likely to me,” said Haver. “Everyone so far corroborates the fact that John won. The alleged amounts have varied somewhat but seem to cluster around two hundred thousand. If John had had an outstanding debt he would have paid up.”

“Maybe he didn’t want to?”

“Well, that’s a possibility.”

“Maybe it whet his appetite and he went on to play more games in which he accumulated debt?”

“Even more possible,” Haver said. “The game took place sometime at the end of October. There was a lot of time for poker between then and the murder.”

“I don’t agree,” Ottosson said. “Little John was smart and cautious by nature. He would never have risked losing so much money.”

“But to win in the first place he must already have had a lot. Many of these guys say he was betting freely, almost wildly. No one had seen him play this way before.”

“Maybe that’s why he won. Everyone was taken by surprise,” Fredriksson said.

“Can someone simply have been ticked off?” Morenius asked. He always had a question.

“Not enough to commit murder,” Haver said.

He wanted someone to think of something new. Everything that had come out so far were things he had already mulled over in his mind, but at the same time he knew the discussion had to proceed in this way in order to eventually construct a likely scenario.

“If we return to Hahn,” Ryde, the forensic expert, said. “It’s clear that Vivan Molin was strangled sometime this morning. Hahn had spent the night, we have recovered samples of his hair from the bed in the room he most likely would have used. Today’s paper had been crumpled up and shoved to the bottom of the trash, as if he had tried to hide it from her. The phone cord has been torn from the wall. He may have been trying to prevent her from calling, or else it was something he grabbed when he wanted to strangle her. In some way, we think, she found out that he had attacked Karlsson in Sävja.”

“Radio or TV,” Fredriksson said. “There was a radio in the kitchen.”

Ryde nodded. Only Fredriksson could interrupt him without getting a caustic remark.

“True. We’ll have to check if the Sävja incident was reported in the morning news. There’s no trace of a third person, even if we can’t rule it out. Murder, unclear motive, either uncontrolled impulse or to keep someone quiet.”

“Excellent,” Ottosson said and smiled, a smile that bore witness to great fatigue. He was running a fever and several of them had already suggested he go home to bed, not least Lundin, who refused to get anywhere near him.

“How did he get from Akademiska Hospital to Johannesbäck?” Berglund asked. “He must have had access to a car.”

“It’s not very likely that he took a bus,” Fredriksson agreed. “We’ll have to check with the taxi companies.”

“The only thing we can do is try to find any acquaintances of Hahn and continue patrolling the areas. Ottosson asserts there’s a high probability he’ll be drifting around the city. He’s the type. Allan, you’ll have to research where Hahn would hang out.”

“Thanks,” Fredriksson said and pinched the top of his nose.

“How will we proceed with John?” Morenius asked.

“We’ll grill the poker guys, check their alibis, and find Dick Lindström, ‘The Lip’ Rosengren, and Mossa,” Haver said. “There isn’t much else to do. Then there’s a thing I’ve been thinking about. Many individuals have asserted that John was planning something big. What could that have been?”

“An aquarium store, I think,” Berglund said. “Pettersson, whom I talked to, said John had alluded to something like that.”

“It wouldn’t necessarily have had to be a store,” Sammy said. “It could have been something big with poker.”

“Have we checked with John’s wife about the poker playing?”

“Beatrice is there right now,” Ottosson said.

They sat in the kitchen, like last time. Justus had lingered outside the doorway but then had gone to his room. The rap music carried all the way to the kitchen.

“I know it’s too loud,” Berit said, more factually than apologetically, “but I don’t have the heart to ask him to turn it down.”

“How has it been going for him?” Beatrice asked.

“He doesn’t say much. He hasn’t been going to school. Mostly he sits in front of the fish tank.”

“Were they close?”

Berit nodded.

“Very,” she said after a while. “They were always together. If there was anyone who could get John to change his mind, it was Justus.”

“How were things financially? You’ve said before there were hard times.”

Berit looked out the window.

“We had a good life,” she said.

“And lately?”

“I know where you’re going with this. You think John was involved in something illicit, but you’re wrong. He was quiet and sometimes unreachable, but he wasn’t stupid.”

“I’m not implying he was. But I’ll get to the point: it seems John won a great deal of money this fall.”

“What do you mean ‘won’? Horse racing?”

“No, a card game. Poker.”

“Well, I know he played cards sometimes, but it was never for high stakes.”

“What about two hundred thousand,” Beatrice said.

“What? That’s not possible.”

Berit’s surprise seemed genuine. She swallowed and stared at Beatrice in bafflement.

“Not only is it possible, it seems almost certain. We have several witnesses.”

Berit lowered her head and hunched over. One hand fumbled along the tablecloth, fingering the embroidery, in this case a sleigh-riding Santa. The music from Justus’s room had stopped and the apartment was quiet.

“Why didn’t he say anything? Two hundred thousand? That’s a fortune! There has to be some mistake. Who says he won that much?”

“Among others, four people who lost a lot of money that night.”

“And now they’re angry at John and trying to pin this on him.”

“You can choose to see it like that, but I think they’re telling the truth. It’s not to their benefit to lie about being involved in a high-stakes poker game, but they feel pressured now and they’re choosing to come clean. Many of them even have trouble accounting for the money they were betting that night.”

“Was he murdered for the money, then?”

“That’s starting to look like a possibility.”

“Where is the money now?”

“We’ve wondered about that. It may have been stolen in conjunction with the murder or it’s in a bank account somewhere, or else…”

“Somewhere around here,” Berit finished. “But we have no money in this apartment.”

“Have you checked?”

“Checked—well, no, not exactly. But I’ve been putting John’s things away and you and your colleagues have turned the place upside down.”

“I’m afraid we’ll have to do that one more time.”

“It’ll be Christmas soon. I’m thinking of Justus. He’s going to need some peace and quiet.”

They kept talking. Beatrice tried to get Berit to reflect back on the fall again, now that she knew he had won so much money. Had he been different in any way? But Berit claimed he had been his usual self.

Beatrice showed her pictures of the men who had participated in the poker game. Berit studied each one carefully but didn’t recognize any of them.

“One of these men could be John’s killer,” she said. Beatrice didn’t reply, just gathered up the pictures.

“Do you mind if I have a word with Justus?” she asked.

“I can’t stop you,” Berit said quietly. “Are you going to show him the pictures as well?”

“Maybe not, but I also want to ask him if he noticed anything different about John in the fall.”

“They mostly talked about their fish.”

Beatrice stood up.

“Do you think he’ll talk to me?”

“You’ll have to ask him yourself. One more thing: when did he win the money?”