Twenty-Seven

Three days after Armas’s murder, Valdemar Husman called the police information line. He had found a note on his door in Lugnet urging him to contact the police.

He was immediately connected to Lindell. There were several others to choose from, but Gunnel Brodd in the call center and Ann Lindell knew each other well. They were both from the same region, Lindell from Ödeshög and Gunnel Brodd from Linköping. Sometimes they socialized. Like Lindell, Gunnel was a single mother, so they both belonged to a sisterhood that spanned both a longing for as well as the desire to circumvent the need for men.

“It’s about the murder, isn’t it?”

“I see,” Lindell said noncommittally, and her thoughts went to Viola in Gräsö. The man had a similar dialect.

“There was a note on the door when I got home, I imagine it has to do with the murder.”

“I see, in that case I understand, you live in the area. Yes, we wanted to get in touch with everyone who may have seen or heard anything.”

“Well, I don’t know,” the man said. “I have been away. I left the day before the murder. To my brother in Fagervik. I stay there when I service my clients.”

Valdemar Husman was a blacksmith with roots in northern Uppland who had moved to Uppsala a year ago.

“For love,” he said with a bittersweet chuckle.

He immersed himself in a discussion of how difficult it was to build up a new clientele. Lindell sensed he might have been more positive if his “love” had worked out better.

But he had been able to retain his clients in his former area and so three or four times a year he would “do the rounds” and spend the night at his brother’s house.

“Did you notice anything unusual before you traveled to north Uppland?” Lindell said, jumping into his tirade, sensing that there was something here.

“Some devil camped out below my house, but now when I went down there and checked, he was gone.”

After they finished the conversation, Lindell went to see Ola Haver, who was sitting in his office, busy consolidating all the alibis for the employees at Dakar and Alhambra.

“I’m glad you came by,” he said as she sat down across from him.

“You are driving up to Lugnet,” Lindell informed him.

She would have liked to do it herself but had decided to pay another visit to the hospital. She didn’t really want to, but knew that if she hesitated any longer she would never get around to it. Maybe they would send Viola home first.

She told him what Valdemar Husman had seen. It could turn out to be nothing more than a harmless tourist who wanted to avoid the camping fee, some teenagers taking advantage of the last warm spell of summer, or perhaps an infatuated couple seeking privacy, but this lead had to be followed up. It was actually the only thing so far of any substance.

“Take Morgansson or one of the other technicians with you.”

Haver looked up at the mention of Morgansson’s name, but Lindell pretended not to notice his gaze, continuing on without an outward sign. Morgansson was a completed chapter.

“Husman is at home. Get in touch with him and pick a time,” she said, completely unnecessarily in order to conceal her irritation.

This time she was not going to hesitate, she was going to march straight into Viola’s room and wake her up if need be.

But Ann Lindell never got that far. When the elevator door slid open in the 70 building of the Akademiska Hospital, Barbro Liljendahl walked out.

She had been to visit Olle Sidström, the man who had been stabbed in Sävja, and conducted follow-up questioning. He was not suspected of anything, or rather, Barbro Liljendahl could easily suspect him of a million crimes, but this time he happened to be the victim.

She looked quizzically at Ann Lindell.

“Are you also going to talk to Sidström?”

She couldn’t help but feel a sting of irritation.

“No,” Lindell explained, equally surprised to bump into someone from work, “I’m here to see a good friend. I had a couple of minutes to spare.”

Liljendahl nodded and then looked doubtfully at Lindell.

“I was thinking of something,” she said. “Sidström was stabbed and you have a stabbing homicide, don’t you? It was done with a knife, wasn’t it?”

Lindell nodded and understood where she was going with this.

“Could there be a connection?” Liljendahl continued.

Lindell hesitated for a split second.

“Do you have time? We could have a quick cup of coffee and talk about it.”

They sat down in a corner of the cafeteria on the ground level. Two tables away there was an older couple, the man wearing hospital clothing and the woman palpably concerned that he drink all his juice.

“You need liquids,” she said.

The man shook his head but picked up the glass and took a sip.

Both policewomen observed the couple for a while before they quietly began to talk.

Liljendahl told her about her case, how Sidström had been assaulted, without prior provocation, according to him. He had been in Sävja to take a look around, as he put it, because he was thinking of moving there. He was currently living in Svartbäcken.

He had only a diffuse memory of the events. He could not give a description or age of the person who stabbed him, he could also not recall if it had been one or more persons involved. This was not unheard of in these circumstances, but Liljendahl did not believe him.

“I think he knows the perp and does not want to reveal his identity,” she said. “He lies constantly and has done so his entire life. His list of priors is three pages long. Mostly drug-related offenses but even assault and exhortation. A little shit.

“On the other hand we have witnesses, primarily a couple who were barbecuing on their patio about fifty meters away, who saw three, perhaps four young men attack him. They appeared to have been involved in a loud discussion before the knife came out, but Sidström denies this.”

“Any suspects?”

“We have a very likely suspect, a young guy who goes by the name of Zero. He’s laying low but will probably turn up soon. His mother, and above all his brothers, are insanely angry. They have mobilized the entire clan in order to find him.

“They are Turkish or Kurdish,” she added when she saw Lindell’s expression.

“Do you have any reason to suspect that Sidström was in Sävja with criminal intent?” Lindell asked, and was struck by the officious tone of her own words.

“Drugs,” Liljendahl said simply. “Most likely cocaine. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but this town is swimming in cocaine. In the past, cocaine was a trendy drug that did not appear on the street. It gives a similar kick to an amphetamine but is more expensive. The usual drug users choose amphetamines. But now the tide appears to have turned. I think the supply has increased and driven down the price.”

“How much does it cost?” Lindell asked.

“A gram goes for around eight hundred kronor. That is enough for ten doses. Amphetamines cost around two hundred.”

“Isn’t cocaine what they chew in South Africa?”

“Yes, the leaves, but that’s mostly to be able to bear the work and the cold. Haven’t you seen those pictures of Bolivian miners?”

Lindell hadn’t, but she nodded anyway.

“And you believe there’s a possible connection with the homicide?”

“Knife and knife,” Liljendahl said.

Lindell sipped her coffee. The doughnut she had bought lay untouched. It probably wouldn’t taste as good as Ottosson’s. Of course, she thought, there was something to what her colleague was saying. Knives were not exactly unusual, but two incidents so close in time, perhaps …

“I have a list,” Liljendahl said, pulling a folder out of her bag, locating a piece of paper and handing it to Lindell.

She’s good, Lindell thought, and ran here eyes down the list of names of Sidström’s old acquaintances. Lindell recognized many of the names, but there was one name in particular that caught her attention.

“Can you make a copy and toss it up to me later?”

“No problem,” Liljendahl said, with a tweak of satisfaction around her mouth.

Ann’s resolve to go see Viola had deteriorated after the discussion with Barbro Liljendahl. Again she stood at the elevator but this time she was considerably more irresolute. What will I do if Edvard is there, she thought, and the very idea made her back up a few steps and allow a group of hospital staff to pass. The elevator left without her.

She despised herself. This was about Viola and nothing else. She could ask at the desk if Viola had any visitors. She pressed the elevator call button for the third time and this time the doors opened at once.

Viola was sitting in a wheelchair by the window. Ann coughed but the old woman did not move. The silver white hair stood on end. Her right hand was tapping lightly on the armrest. This was the same old Viola, restless, eager to get away, Ann thought.

“Hi Viola,” she said and the old woman turned her head and stared at Lindell without displaying in gesture or expression that she recognized her visitor. Lindell took several steps into the room.

“It’s me, Ann.”

“Do you think I’m blind?” Viola said. “No, you think I’m completely senile.”

For a second or two Ann was incapable of replying, her hand went up to her face as if to ward off Viola’s searching gaze. She masked her gesture by pulling back a few strands of hair.

“Dear me, you poor thing,” Viola said softly, and they were the most tender words that Ann had ever heard her say.

“I heard that you had taken a fall,” Ann said, fighting to keep the tears back. If only she were my mother, was a thought that came flying, and it made her feel guilty.

“Things are as they are,” Viola said. “The damned chicken coop tripped me up.”

“Are you in pain?”

Viola shook her head.

“When will you get to go home?”

“They say next week, but there’s so much talk here you don’t know what to make of it all.”

Ann pulled out a chair and sat down beside her.

“How is everything with Victor?”

“As usual, a bit frail in the winter but he perks up when the sun comes.”

Ann didn’t know what else to ask about. As in the beginning of their relationship, Ann felt self-conscious and awkward.

“And you?” Viola said.

“I’m doing well, thanks. Working and busy. Right now we have an unpleasant murder case.”

“You have always been involved in unpleasantries. And the boy?”

“Erik is fine. He’s at day care.”

Ann swallowed. Go on, she thought, looking at Viola’s face, ask me.

“Edvard was up here yesterday,” Viola said. “He had an errand to run.”

Lindell nodded.

“He is working with Gottfrid as usual. They are working so hard, you wouldn’t believe it.”

The note of pride in her voice was unmistakable. She studied Ann with amusement. The old woman hasn’t changed a bit, she thought. She is a miracle.

“That’s wonderful,” Ann said.

“Yes, but of course it’s far too much,” Viola said grumpily, and in this way annulled her earlier contentment.

This was typical of her. Nothing was allowed to remain really good. On the other hand things were certainly allowed to be thoroughly awful. She had no difficulties with that.

“I’ve never spent this long in Uppsala. I usually make do with the town,” Viola said, and Ann gathered she was referring to Öregrund. “During my entire life I’ve been to Uppsala perhaps twenty or so times, but never for this long.”

She fell silent and looked out the window.

“They are building so much,” she said, and took on a look of satisfaction. Ann sensed that she was thinking of Edvard.

What joy she had received from Edvard. She must have thanked her lucky stars countless times for that evening when Edvard had come knocking and asked if he could rent a room.

“It’s time for me to leave,” Ann said. “Are you sleeping well?”

Viola chuckled.

“That was a question,” she said. “Go on, get out here and catch some thieves.”

Ann put her chair back and walked to the door, turning when she was halfway. The old woman was looking at her. Ann quickly went back, leaned down, and gave her a clumsy hug. Then she left without saying anything else and without turning back.

She felt that it was the last time she would see Viola. “Go on, get out here and catch some thieves.” At the start of their friendship Viola had openly expressed her disapproval over the fact that Ann was a police officer. She said it was not a suitable occupation for a woman. Now Ann interpreted her last comment as a sign of approval. Perhaps it was her way of saying that she liked Ann despite everything, despite what she had done, in betraying and hurting Viola’s adored Edvard. Ann had always had a feeling, which admittedly had grown weaker with time, of inferiority to the old woman. It was not only her awe-inspiring age, her stubborn strength, and independence that inspired this feeling, but also the fact that she had lived and continued to live a life outside society.

In some obscure way this both appealed to and frightened Ann. It was probably her guilty conscience playing tricks. She had left Ödeshög and her parents, sick of the duck pond that her home town was in her eyes, and bored by her parents, whose only goal in life appeared to be keeping the spirea hedge in top form.

She was about twenty years old when she left Östergötland for the Police Academy. Contact with her parents had been sporadic since then. At the end of June, when she had gone down there for a week, she had started to miss Uppsala after only one night.

Ann Lindell was upset but did not know how to sort out her thoughts, much less draw any conclusions and formulate goals. There was too much at stake, her own life, Erik’s, work, Edvard, her parents—everything had been brought to the surface by her visit to the hospital.

She decided to push these thoughts aside. She had techniques for this. Right now the solution had the name of Berglund.

Berglund had gone home! Lindell listened astonished to Ottosson’s account of Berglund coming down with a migraine.

“That’s never happened before, has it?”

“No,” Ottosson replied. “I can’t remember the last time Berglund was sick. Some time in the eighties, I think.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing. I was the one who sent him home and he didn’t protest. He was as pale as a corpse. Allan gave him a ride.”

“Oh,” Lindell said, in a defeated voice.

“Was there anything in particular?”

“I was going to check on something, a name that turned up.”

Lindell told him how Berglund had mentioned in passing a crook who had recently come into money and how the same name had now turned up in connection with the case in Sävja.

“Rosenberg,” Ottosson said. “Yes, he’s a jewel of a guy. I knew his father. He was part of the gang at the Weather Vane, an old beer hall on Salagatan. They tore it down about six months after I started patrolling. There was another joint on Salagatan, Cafe 31, there was an old lady by the name of Anna who … she lived, if I remember correctly, almost at the top of Ymergatan, you know, on the same street as Little John, you know, grew up. There was a Konsum grocery store there that had damned good fresh buns, fifteen öre a piece or if—It’s almost a pity that places like the Weather Vane fold, because—The stores were packed so tightly back then. There was a Konsum store on Väderkvarnsgatan as well, and then a Haages Livs grocery on Torkelsgatan, up by Törnlundsplan there was also something, what was their name? … Brodd or something like that, and then Ekdahls at the corner of Ymergatan and St. Göransgatan, and then the milk-and-bread store in Tripolis. You see! All within five minutes’ walk from one another.”

Ottosson lost himself in revery. Lindell had to laugh.

“I should have known,” she said.

“But I don’t associate Rosenberg with violence and definitely not with big business,” Ottosson resumed.

“Maybe it’s worth checking into anyway,” Lindell said and told him about Liljendahl’s observation that a knife was involved in both cases.

“Well,” Ottosson said, “I think that’s pushing it. We have a lot of conflicts where knives are involved.”

“I’m still going to have someone check up on Rosenberg. In any case, it would be amusing to find out what has made him so conspicuously rich. Have you heard anything about Haver’s excursion to the camping spot by the river?”

“He called and wanted you to call him back.”

“I had my phone turned off at the hospital. What did he say?”

“That the camper may have been our man.”

Lindell hurried to her office and dialed Haver’s number.

He sounded pleased, almost excited, and he had good reason to be. They had most likely located the scene of the crime, a small clearing perhaps some twenty square meters concealed behind a thicket and a large mound of rubble, not visible from the road, perhaps four hundred meters north of the place the body was found, and some one hundred meters from the river.

The technicians had almost immediately isolated samples from the ground of what they believed to be blood, and also traces of what most likely was urine.

Apparently one or more persons had occupied the site for several days. A rectangle of flattened grass suggested the presence of a tent. The surrounding area was trampled, there were broken twigs and the remains of a fire. A veritable feast for the forensic team.

Valdemar Husman, who had alerted the police, had nothing to say about the person or persons who might have been camping. He had only noticed something peeking out of the vegetation, and had assumed it was a tent. He explained that he had not approached it further so as not to appear curious, and not to get “dragged into anything.”

“What did he mean by that?” Lindell asked.

“I don’t know,” Haver answered. “He didn’t say.”

“I mean, did he have a suspicion that something illegal was going on? Did he hear or see anything that appeared suspicious?”

“Neither. He simply didn’t want to get involved.”

“A little more curiosity wouldn’t hurt,” Lindell said. “Will you be there for a while?”

“I don’t know, I don’t have much to do here. Morgansson and the rest are the ones who are busy. They’re thinking of erecting a tarp over the site in case it rains.”

“Okay, but can we hope for a little DNA?”

“Looks like it.”

“Then the question is, what was Armas doing there? Did he go willingly or was he forced?”

“I’ll let you figure that one out,” Haver said.

After she hung up, Ann Lindell sat absolutely still and stared into space.

“Who camps out?” she muttered.

Tourists or young people seemed most likely.

The site was private and probably chosen with care.

“Okay, you come to this city for murky business,” she said out loud. “You are careful not to be seen in a hotel or even at a public campsite. Instead, you camp in the forest, but you are so clumsy you leave a corpse and numerous traces behind.”

She shook her head. Something didn’t make sense.

She went over to Ottosson and recounted what Haver had told her, and added her own thoughts.

“Maybe the perp couldn’t afford to stay in a hotel,” Ottosson said.

“What kind of murderer is that?” Lindell exclaimed.

“Most people don’t stay in hotels,” Ottosson said with a grin.

The rest of the day was spent reviewing the material that had been collected. This had to be done, but above all Lindell felt a need to be alone. More and more she suffered an almost claustrophobic feeling in her dealings with people, whether at work, in meetings at Erik’s day care, or in situations where the room was small and the number of people large.

There were reports from questionings, an initial overview of Slobodan Andersson’s business dealings, and the autopsy report.

Armas’s personal history was still missing. Slobodan Andersson had contributed a part, but much of his early life was still unknown.

Lindell heard Ola Haver return, and could hear him and Fredriksson chatting in the corridor. Her thoughts went to Berglund. She decided to wait until the following day. If he didn’t come in to work she would call him at home.