The princess of Burundi (7 page)

“Was it bad?”

“The usual. Hell, in other words, but Bea had the worst of it.”

“Informing the family members?”

“What else is going on? How are the kids?”

“Was he married?”

“Yes,” Haver said.

“Children?”

“A boy, fourteen.”

Rebecka tipped up the end of the cutting board, pulling the knife over the board to scrape the last pieces into the frying pan. He looked at the knife in her hand. The stone in her ring, the one he had bought in London, gleamed ruby red.

“I’m making something new,” she said, and he knew she was talking about the food.

He straightened up and went to shower off.

Justus Jonsson got up out of his bed at twenty to four in the morning. He had woken up with a start, driven by a single thought. His dad’s voice:
You know what you have to do, boy
.

Why hadn’t he thought of it before? He tiptoed to the door, opened it, and saw the light on in the hall. He listened, but the apartment was quiet. The door to his parents’ bedroom was slightly ajar. He peeked in and saw to his surprise that the bed was empty. He was confused for a few seconds—had she left? But then he saw that the covers were missing and then he understood.

She was sleeping on the sofa. He walked over and stood so close that he could hear her breathing and then, reassured, returned to the bedroom. The closet door squeaked softly as he opened it. With the most careful movements he could muster he carried a chair over so that he could reach the top shelf, all the way at the back.

That’s where John had kept the boxes of aquarium equipment, spare parts to the pumps, filters, a jar of pebbles, plastic bags, and the like. Behind all this Justus located what he was looking for and carefully teased out the box. His mother coughed and he stopped, waiting for half a minute before he dared to get down, put the box on the bed, put the chair back, and gently shut the closet door.

The box was heavier than he had expected. He tucked it under one arm, looked out into the hall, and listened. He was sweating. The floor was cold. The clock out in the living room struck four.

Justus had saved his father. That’s how he felt. A wave of warmth pulsed through him.
It’s our secret
, he thought.
No one will find out, I promise.

He crept in under the covers, pulled his legs up, and put his hands together. He prayed that John would see him, hear him, touch him. One last time. He would have given anything to feel the touch of his father’s hand again.

On the other side of the city, Ola Haver was getting up. Was it the headache that had woken him or one of the kids? Rebecka was sleeping heavily. She always woke up at the slightest sound from the little ones, so he suspected it was the pain behind his brow that had cut his sleep short.

He took a couple of painkillers, washed them down with a glass of milk, and remained standing at the kitchen counter.
I should be sleeping
, he thought. He looked at the time: half past four. Had the paper arrived? At that moment he heard the door to the apartment building slam shut and he took that as a sign.

He waited at the front door and picked the paper up when it was pushed through the mail slot. It struck him that he had never seen the delivery person, but he sensed it was a man. That’s what the steps in the stairwell sounded like. A person who serves us every morning and whom we would sorely miss if he stayed home one day. No face, just a pair of feet and a hand to push the paper through the mail slot.

Haver unfolded the newspaper and turned on the kitchen lamp. The picture from Libro was the first thing he saw. The story had not changed. Liselotte Rask, the public relations manager, confirmed the facts of the brutal murder and added that the police had recovered certain traces at the site. Haver smiled.
Yes,
he thought,
my shoe prints, Ottosson’s, and Bea’s.

The picture of the victim didn’t do him justice, but in comparison to how his body had looked it was a glamour shot.
People just can’t imagine,
Haver thought.
They don’t know what we have to see. Not even Rebecka understands—but how could she?

Haver pushed the paper aside. He thought about how he should organize the day. He took a look at the list of tasks he had assigned himself the night before.

Bea was going to search John’s apartment in Gränby. Sammy would maybe accompany her. He was good with kids. And Haver thought John’s son would probably like dealing with a male police officer.

John’s brother had to be questioned, and they would have to question the wife again. Bea hadn’t managed to get much out of her during their conversation yesterday.

According to Berit Jonsson, her husband had taken the bus downtown. Which bus? They could probably find the driver. He or she would perhaps recall at which stop John had gotten off. The pet-store line of inquiry also had to be pursued to see if he had bought a pump and in that case where and when. They had to do everything possible to try to re-create John’s steps on his last afternoon.

Haver dismissed all thoughts of the murder investigation, pulled the paper back over, and read it thoroughly. He had plenty of time and his headache was getting better. He assuaged his hunger with a banana and some yogurt.

He wasn’t tired exactly, but tense in preparation for the day’s activities. If they could establish the movements of John’s last days relatively quickly, their chances of solving the case increased dramatically.

It was no accident, nor was it a murder committed in haste, he was convinced of that. The murderer or murderers would be found in John’s circle of acquaintances. It shouldn’t be too hard to establish a cast of characters.

The motive? Money, Bea had said. Drugs, was Riis’s suggestion, although Ottosson had dismissed this, saying that John Jonsson had never been a dealer. The chief had gone as far as to claim that John had hated drugs.

Haver leaned toward the theory that it was money. An old debt that had not been repaid, a lender who went out of control, who perhaps had been provoked. He would ask Sammy to compile a list of known lenders. Haver knew of some already, above all Sundin from Gävle, who sometimes made guest appearances in Uppsala, also the brothers Häll and the “Gym Coach,” a bodybuilder who had a background in karate. Were there others? Sammy would know.

Debt. It must have been a substantial sum to motivate murder,
Haver mused.
What exactly constitutes a “substantial sum”? One hundred thousand? Half a million?

It struck him suddenly that the murderer was perhaps also reading the morning paper at this precise moment. In contrast to the newspaper reporters and the police, the killer knew the whole story. Consumed by this thought, Haver got up and walked to the window. It was snowing. The lights were on in a couple of windows on the other side of the street. Perhaps he was there, in one of the apartments on the other side?

Haver snorted at these musings but couldn’t rid himself of the thought that the murderer was also awake right now. The thought both appealed to him and appalled him. He liked it, because it meant that the murderer was unable to sleep in peace, did not feel secure, and was worried by the words that the police “had recovered certain clues.” He was thinking, probably for the hundredth time, of how he had transported the dead or dying man to Libro. Had he dropped something or left tracks? There was perhaps some small detail that he had missed, a mistake that he sensed, that was now depriving him of sleep in the wee hours. But he disliked thinking of how the murderer was free to read the paper, drink his coffee and wander out into the morning, sit in the car or perhaps even board a plane, only to disappear from reach.

“Stay where you are,” Haver mumbled.

“Did you say something?”

Rebecka appeared in the doorway. He hadn’t heard her get up. She had the green nightgown on. Her hair was messy and she looked tired. He guessed that she had been up nursing the little one.

“I was just talking to myself,” he said. “I’m reading about the murder.”

Rebecka yawned and went to the bathroom. Haver cleared his things up in the kitchen, refilled the coffeemaker and switched it on. He felt torn again. The peace and quiet of the morning was over and so was the possibility of quiet reflection, but at the same time he loved having her there with him, not least in the early morning.

It was something left over from childhood. In his home, the mornings had always been unusually peaceful, a pleasurable time for family members to be together. They had been an unusual family in that they had all been morning people, almost to the point where they tried to compete over who could appear the most cheerful and friendly.

Haver had tried to re-create this with Rebecka, even though she often bordered on a state of complete exhaustion in the mornings. He would make her coffee, toast, and, before she had gotten pregnant, a boiled egg and roe spread. Now she couldn’t stand the smell of either egg or roe.

He ate his eggs with a feeling of guilt, but he couldn’t bring himself to completely exclude them from his morning ritual.

Rebecka returned from the bathroom. She smiled and ruffled his hair.

“You’re a mess,” she said.

He grabbed her, pulling her close, and hugged her, with his nose pressed against her stomach. He knew she was reading the paper over his head, but he drew in her smell and for a short while forgot all about the black headlines.

Modig took the call at seven thirty five
A.M
. He was working the night shift and was still on duty. His colleague Tunander had had a car accident on his way to work and wouldn’t be in until eight.

Not that it troubled Modig unduly. No one was waiting for him at home and he was still feeling unusually alert. His vacation was due to start soon. He had taken off more days than usual and booked a trip to Mexico departing on December 23. When the call came he was wondering what the food would be like. His experiences with so-called Mexican food in Sweden had not filled him with great expectations.

“Someone has strangled Ansgar!” a woman said, clearly distraught.

Modig had little patience with people who panted or even breathed audibly on the phone.

“Please calm yourself,” he said.

“But he’s dead!”

“Who’s dead?”

“Ansgar! I already told you.”

“What’s your name?”

“Gunilla Karlsson.”

She wasn’t breathing as heavily now.

“Where do you live?”

The woman managed to tell him her address with some difficulty, and Modig wrote it down in his usual scrawl.

“Tell me exactly what happened.”

“I walked out onto the patio and there he was, hanging on the fence.”

“Ansgar?”

“Yes. I saw at once that he was dead. And he’s not even mine. How am I ever going to explain this? Malin is going to be devastated.”

“Who is Ansgar?”

“My neighbor’s rabbit.”

Modig couldn’t help smiling. He made a sign to Tunander, who had just walked in, and wrote “dead rabbit” on the pad of paper so that he could read it.

“And you found him on your patio?”

“I was looking after him. They’re away on a trip and I was going to look after Ansgar while they were gone. I was supposed to give him food and water every morning.”

“Did someone string him up or did he get caught on the fence?”

“He has a rope around his neck. He was murdered.”

Does killing a rabbit qualify as murder?
Modig wondered as he wrote “murdered” on the pad of paper.

“When did you see him last?”

Tunander left the room chuckling.

“Last night as I was checking on him. Oh, dear God,” she said, and Modig knew she was thinking of her neighbor, Malin.

“Do you have any idea who would be likely to strangle a rabbit?” Modig asked and was suddenly hit by a wave of fatigue.

The woman started to tell him about the care of the rabbit in great detail. Modig stared into space. He heard voices of other officers coming from the area of the building called the Sea.

“We’ll see what we can do,” Modig said kindly.

“Will someone come out? I have to go in to work. Should I let Ansgar hang there?”

Modig thought for a moment.

“Let him stay where he is,” he said finally.

Tunander came back with a cup of coffee.

“How can you name a rabbit Ansgar?” Modig asked when he hung up.

“What kind was it?” Tunander asked.

“What kind?”

“There are all kinds of different breeds. Didn’t you know that?”

He sat down.

“How did it go?”

“Just some dents,” Tunander said and was immediately serious. “Some bitch drove right into me.”

He shook his head. Modig got up.

“Anything to report?” Tunander asked.

“It’s been quiet. A few calls about Little John.”

“Anything of substance?”

“Maybe. I don’t know,” Modig said absently.

He felt exhausted. Mexico was definitely the right decision.

“He was white,” he said.

“Who?”

“Ansgar,” Modig said and heaved himself out of his chair.

Modig left the building, not to return for another fourteen days, just as a meeting concerning the case of John Jonsson was called to order in the large conference room. The assembled group consisted of the usual people from the Violent Crimes Division, Morenius from the Crime Information Service, forensic specialist Ryde, Julle and Aronsson from the Patrol Division, and Rask, who headed the public relations team. A total of twenty or so individuals in all.

Ottosson presided over the meeting. He was getting better at it. Haver glanced at him. He was sitting on Ottosson’s left side, where Lindell normally sat. It was as if Ottosson sensed what he was thinking about, because at that precise moment he put his hand on Haver’s arm, looked at him, and smiled, just like he always did with Ann Lindell.

The touch lasted only a fraction of a second, but the smile was warm and the nod Ottosson gave him filled Haver with joy. He looked around to see if anyone had registered this gesture of collegiality or even friendship. Berglund, who sat across from Haver, smiled slightly.

Haver was surprisingly tense. He was usually dispirited by the sight of so many people gathered around the table, which could only mean that some atrocious act of violence had been committed. Not that he was sick of his work, but he—like his colleagues—realized that a murder investigation drained resources from the other cases. Some people would go free as a result of the fact that they were all sitting there. That was just the way it was.
Violence begets violence, as the saying goes,
he thought, and that was literally true in this context. Maybe it would be a case of wife-beating or a downtown brawl that would suffer and only encourage the perpetrators to continue.

The chief talked about sending “the right signals.” A murder investigation signaled an escalation of crime. Haver had always known this, but the insight struck him with new force this morning, perhaps because Sammy Nilsson had been complaining as they were walking into the conference room. He was taking part in a new project involving street crime, started after a number of “incidents”—as the chief put it—three assault cases involving youth gangs, the last on the evening of the Santa Lucia celebration.

Now Sammy was forced to leave this work in order to assist in the Little John case. Haver had seen the dejection in his colleague’s face and he understood it completely. Sammy was their youth man, more so than anyone else on the squad. Assisted by colleagues from Drug Enforcement, he had made large inroads in dissolving the gangs, talking sense into the young men who descended upon the town and outlying suburbs like a pack of wild animals. Those were Sammy’s own words.

“They’re like a pack of animals driven from their hunting grounds,” he had said, without specifying exactly where these hunting grounds were located, or who it was who was driving them. Haver had the impression that it was the gangs who were driving other, more peaceful citizens from the streets.

Ottosson asked for silence and almost immediately everyone around the table stopped talking. The chief paused for a few seconds while the whole room sank into stillness. It was as if he wanted to hold a moment of silence for Little John. Everyone was aware of the fact that Ottosson had known the deceased over the course of his entire adult life. Perhaps that was why everyone, as if in wordless agreement, stopped their chatter and their rustling of papers. A few looked at Ottosson, others stared down at the table.

“Little John is dead,” Ottosson began. “There are probably those of us who don’t think that’s much of a loss.”

He paused again, and Haver, who again cast a quick glance at his boss, sensed his doubt as to how he should continue—or was he wondering how his words were going to affect the assembled officers? Ottosson was always concerned about maintaining an upbeat atmosphere, and Haver expected that he would be very careful not to say anything that might have a negative impact.

“That would be a pity, however,” Ottosson said in a forceful voice. “Little John was once a young kid who took a wrong turn, a hell of a wrong turn. Many of you know his big brother, Lennart, and there you have part of the reason why. I have the advantage of having met their parents, Albin and Aina. Fine, decent people.”

How is he going to pull this off?
Haver thought, feeling an almost physical discomfort.
Fine people
was a phrase Ottosson sometimes used, a note of approval that implied more than adherence to a lawful lifestyle.

Haver looked at Bea, who had spoken to John’s mother to test her reaction, but she sat with her head lowered.

“I know they tried to steer their boys right, but it may have been beyond their power. We know very little of what determines a person’s course of action,” Ottosson said thoughtfully.

Bea lifted her head at this outburst of philosophical speculation. Ottosson looked around with slight embarrassment, as if he had committed an indiscretion, and to Haver’s relief he abandoned the subject.

“Ola,” he said in a different and more familiar tone of voice. “Please run through an account of the events to date.”

Haver started by giving them greetings from Ann Lindell, which he immediately realized was a mistake. He tried to repair this error by quickly establishing the perimeters of the murder case. He hastily sketched out the contours of the case, which he said he hoped his colleagues would flesh out with the results of the forensic investigation, the distilled results of any questioning that had taken place. Other issues they needed to address were: Had the initial investigation of the crime site yielded anything? Had there been any results from going door to door? What were the results of the autopsy? Had the initial investigation of the crime site yielded anything?

Haver proceeded through the points on his list in a systematic fashion. No one interrupted him, and when he finished there was an unusual silence in the room.

Did I forget something?
Haver wondered and quickly consulted his notepad.

“Excellent,” Ottosson said and smiled.

“Over to you, Ryde.”

The forensic specialist spoke in his usual morning drawl. The snow dump in Libro had yielded a number of interesting objects, although of course many of these had nothing to do with the murder: empty cigarette packs, toys, car tires, orange traffic cones, the sidewalk advertisement from a local café, two plastic balls, a dead kitten, three ice scrapers, and so on. The most remarkable object recovered so far was a stuffed bird, a herring gull, according to Hugosson, a technician who was also an avid bird-watcher.

Two of the objects seemed significant: a length of green nylon rope, about eight millimeters in diameter, and a bloodstained work glove. Results of the blood analysis were not in yet. It could turn out to belong to John, but it could also have come from any one of the many trucks that frequented the dump. Ryde speculated that a driver could have injured himself, stained the glove with blood, and then tossed it or dropped it accidentally. It was a lined winter glove of the label Windsor Elite.

However, the length of rope, barely fifty centimeters, could be directly connected with John. The pattern of the rope fit the marks left on his wrists, and furthermore—and this clinched it—some of John’s hairs had become entangled in the rope’s fibers. The rope, which could have been bought at any gas station or corner store, had been recovered three meters from the body.

They had found a number of tire tracks. Most of these belonged to heavy vehicles with wide tires. Trucks, according to Ryde’s personal opinion. Also tracks from another piece of machinery, probably the Cat that the county had brought in to clear the snow.

But one set of tracks was of greater interest. These belonged to a car and had been found close to John’s body. The prints had been somewhat unclear since the ceaseless snow had partially covered them, but because of the relatively sudden swing from mild to cold weather during the night of the murder, one part of the tracks had frozen and the technicians had been able to reconstruct the pattern and the width.

Ryde spread out a series of photocopies on the table.

“Two hundred twenty millimeters wide, a radial tire, with studs, probably from a van or jeep. This is no rusty Ascona,” he added drily.

“Could the car belong to a county official?” Fredriksson asked, touching one of the black photocopies as if he could feel the pattern with his fingers.

“Sure,” Ryde said. “I’m only giving you what we have. You draw the conclusions.”

“Excellent,” Ottosson repeated.

The meeting continued with Riis giving the results of his investigation into the Jonsson family finances. Much of this was preliminary, as all of the data was not yet in, but for Riis the picture was clear: A low-income family who could not afford much in the way of excesses.

John’s unemployment had hit them hard. There had been more purchases made with monthly payment arrangements and there had been three incidents of failure to make loan repayments during the past two years.

They did not currently receive any housing assistance. The mortgage payment on their condo was reasonable, in Riis’s opinion. There were no incidents recorded with the local housing authorities or from their neighbors.

They only had one credit card, an IKEA card with a balance of around seven thousand kronor. Neither Berit nor John had any private retirement savings or shares or other assets. John had an account with the Förenings-sparbanken, where his unemployment benefit was deposited. Berit received her salary in a private account at Nordbanken. She grossed approximately twelve thousand a month.

John had only one small life-insurance policy, through the trade union, and it was probably not worth very much, according to Riis, who concluded his report with a sigh.

“No excesses and worsening finances the past two years, in other words,” Haver summarized.

“There was one more thing,” Riis said. “In October, John received a deposit into his account of ten thousand kronor. It was an electronic deposit that I have not been able to follow up on yet. I’ll do so later this morning,” Riis added in a for-him unusually defensive tone, as if he was expecting to be criticized for not having all the facts at his disposal.

Haver considered the information; it was clearly the most interesting thing to have come to light so far.

“Ten thousand,” he said, looking like he was thinking about what he would do with ten thousand kronor. “We can only speculate at this point as to where it came from, but it sounds a little fishy.”