Black Lies, Red Blood

Twenty

Sammy Nilsson had just logged onto the computer when the phone rang. He picked up the receiver with a sigh. It was Ottosson.

“My office,” he said, and hung up.

Sammy Nilsson stared at the receiver in amazement. He had never been summoned to his chief’s office in such a brusque manner. Ottosson usually poked his head in and tactfully asked whether you had any time to spare.

Sammy Nilsson suspected what this was about. In pure protest he lingered in front of the computer a few minutes and then slowly took the fifteen steps to Ottosson’s lair, actually the smallest office on the unit.

He entered without knocking.

“Well, the staff sergeant is calling.”

“Sit down,” said Ottosson.

Sammy Nilsson sat down, more curious than worried.

“We’ve received a complaint,” Ottosson began.

He saw himself as a servant of the general public, a somewhat antiquated attitude in the opinion of many of his colleagues, and if there was anything that worried him it was complaints.

“Your namesake, Nilsson, first name Konrad, phoned. According to him you conducted yourself shabbily this morning. He feels offended. And I know how you can be. If a building manager is nice and helps out, you have to adapt. And what were you doing there anyway? Going into the apartment once was borderline official misconduct, that could only be justified if we had indications that Brant was in danger, or something like that. But running there every five minutes doesn’t hold up.”

Shabbily, thought Sammy, he makes it sound like I defiled the stairway.

Ottosson observed him gloomily, but Sammy could not take him seriously. He understood that he was now expected to give his version of the incident, but a sudden sense of fatigue came over him. He decided to bypass Konrad Nilsson and overlook Ottosson’s exaggeration.

“I’ve found a connection between Brant and Gränsberg,” he said.

“I see,” said Ottosson. “But you should have spoken with me first, or Fritzén.”

“Sure, but I didn’t have time. Or rather, I had no desire.”

“Desire or not, we should…” Ottosson began, but did not complete the sentence.

Nilsson told about the photograph, the connection between Brant and Gränsberg, and his idea of digging further to perhaps find a thread worth tugging on.

Ottosson listened but looked moderately impressed.

“You called him a Nazi.”

“He is one,” said Sammy.

“He has filed a formal report.”

“He can stick it up his ass.”

“We may have problems, even more so when Brant comes back. He’s a journalist, and if the building manager gets it into his head to rile up the reporter it can get really unpleasant.”

“We’ll deal with it then, Otto,” said Sammy tiredly. “Right now I want to work.”

He got up from the chair. Ottosson seemed to want to say something more about the collision of the two Nilssons but in the end only let out a sigh.

“Have you seen Lindell?” he asked.

“No, she’s probably at the Savoy.”

The Café Savoy was Ann Lindell’s retreat when she needed to collect her thoughts. For many of her colleagues it was a completely inconceivable environment for thinking, with families with screaming kids, retirees eagerly conversing, and the rattle of cups and plates.

Freddy Johansson now looked considerably more docile. He smelled of sweat and his gaze wandered between Lindell and her notepad, which she was browsing in a little absentmindedly.

“Let’s go over this again,” she said. “A witness saw you together with Klara Lovisa walking on the highway at Skärfälten about twelve o’clock on April twenty-eight. You deny it, but will not submit to a lineup. What are you scared of, if it wasn’t really you?”

“There’s so much bullshit,” Freddy mumbled.

“Yes, on your part.”

“I wasn’t there,” he repeated for the fifth time.

Ann Lindell sat quietly a moment. The ceiling light in the interview room flickered and Freddy looked up in fright. His attorney, Gusten Eriksson, coughed.

“I don’t think we’ll get any further,” he said.

Lindell ignored his interjection. She had encountered Eriksson before, and he was not known for being the sharpest.

“I’ll give you one more chance,” she said. “You can tell me in your own words why the two of you were in Skärfälten. Perhaps there’s a very natural explanation, what do I know?”

“My client has-”

“Otherwise I’ll hold you on probable cause suspected of kidnapping. And as you understand, the charges can quickly get a lot more serious.”

“Now you’re pushing it to the breaking point,” said the attorney, raising his voice. “You have nothing that connects Fredrik to Skärfälten. Besides, it has not been established that the poor girl really was there.”

“Freddy, tell me!”

“I don’t know anything,” he said.

“Okay,” said Lindell. “Then I’ll tell you: Your parents own a Volvo, metallic blue, last year’s model, right? You borrow it sometimes, you’ve admitted that. On Saturday the twenty-eighth of April it was towed from Skärfälten, from a bus stop approximately two hundred meters this side of the side road down to Uppsala-Näs. I have the documents from the towing company here,” said Lindell, holding up a red plastic folder. “It was towed to Uppland Motors. The problem was electrical, a copy of the garage bill is here too. It was picked up on May second by your dad. Who drove the car to Skärfälten, if not you?”

Fredrik Johansson had been staring down at the floor the whole time. When Lindell fell silent, he gave his lawyer a quick glance before he looked at her.

“I was there,” he said hoarsely. “Klovisa and I went for a ride, then there was car trouble. She took off.”

“Wait a minute now,” Lindell interrupted. “She took off, what do you mean by that? Did she start walking back to town, or what?”

“I don’t know, she got tired of waiting.”

“She didn’t say anything?”

“‘I’m splitting,’ she said.”

“In what direction?”

“I don’t remember.”

“And you stayed by the car?”

“Yes.”

“You were seen on the road toward Uppsala-Näs. How do you explain that?”

“It must have been someone else.”

Lindell snorted.

“Pull yourself together, Freddy. You are linked to the scene, we have a credible witness who picked you out among photos of forty different young men. The witness has even described the clothes you had on. Clothes that in all likelihood we are going to find at your house.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Freddy sobbed.

“Perhaps we should break for a while?” Gusten Eriksson interjected, now considerably tamer.

“I don’t think so,” said Lindell, forging ahead. “You knew it was her birthday. You had, or did have, a relationship, but had not slept with each other. You knew she wanted to wait, and just until her sixteenth birthday. You called her up and suggested a little drive. You wanted to screw Klara Lovisa, or what? Perhaps she said something previously, like ‘you’ll have to wait.’ On Saturday the twenty-eighth of April you didn’t want to wait any longer.”

Fredrik Johansson was crying.

“Now we’ll take a short break in the questioning of Fredrik Johansson,” said Lindell. She turned off the tape recorder, got up, and left the room.

Outside the interview room she took a deep breath.

“Klara Lovisa,” she mumbled, leaned against the wall, and closed her eyes.

She knew that she could, and would, crack Fredrik Johansson. She would let them wait fifteen minutes and then take apart the last of his lies. Gusten Eriksson would not offer any resistance, now when he understood that his client could be linked to Skärfälten on the day in question. Perhaps he would try to convince Fredrik to present the whole thing as an accident, that they “bickered” as he was always saying, and that he shoved Klara Lovisa and she fell. Something along those lines. Noncriminal homicide, or in the worst case manslaughter, would most likely be the attorney’s line.

Lindell’s line was homicide. She called Allan Fredriksson, whom she had caught a glimpse of in the corridor, and the new trainee, who might as well be there to listen and learn.

Oskar Nyman came running almost right away, Fredriksson took a few minutes. In the meantime she told the trainee what this was about. He smiled greedily, which she did not like, but she excused him, he was probably tense.

“I see,” said Fredriksson, when he came sauntering in.

“Wipe off the grin,” said Lindell. “It’s not over yet.”

“You’re such a joker, Ann,” said Fredriksson.

“Nice work,” said Nyman, imitating one of Sammy Nilsson’s favorite expressions. Lindell looked at him with surprise, and then started laughing, presumably for the first time since Brant left her bed.

I’ll give him an hour, thought Lindell, when the questioning resumed at 1:22 P.M. Nyman sat down on a wobbly chair by the door. Fredriksson took a seat alongside Lindell. On the other side sat Fredrik Johansson, twenty-two years old and the much older Gusten Eriksson.

Fredrik had been crying and sweating; it smelled musty in the small room. The ceiling fixture flickered again. Lindell took that as a starting signal.

An hour passed without Fredrik Johansson providing a single new piece of information.

“Straighten up now!” said Nyman. “Show us what the hell you’re all about!”

This was a totally unexpected intrusion and completely violated what Lindell had advised the trainee: Sit in, but don’t say anything.

“Now that’s just about enough,” said the attorney.

“Sit down, Nyman,” said Lindell in a sharp tone, but Nyman did not let himself be stopped.

“Sit here and lie to our faces, what’s that like? Monkeyshit, I’d say. It’s shameful, damn it!”

Fucking amateur, Lindell was thinking, when Fredrik burst out in a tearful, stammering harangue.

“I don’t know why she didn’t come back! We were in the hut, we had fun for a while, but she didn’t want to, we bickered a little, then I split. I don’t know what happened! Do you get that? I liked her.”

He fell silent suddenly and stared straight ahead.

Nyman nodded, Lindell could see a hint of a satisfied sneer in his usually rather expressionless face, before he returned to his seat by the door.

Lindell waited until the sobbing subsided before she continued.

“What hut?”

“The old hunting hut, or whatever it is. I don’t know.”

“Where is it?”

“In Skärfälten.”

“Then that was you and Klara Lovisa walking on the road,” Fredriksson observed.

Fredrik raised his head and nodded.

“Speak into the microphone,” said Nyman.

“Yes,” said Fredrik. “It was us.”

He looked at Nyman and then at Lindell.

“Was it that old guy on the moped who saw us?”

Lindell nodded.

“Speak into the microphone,” said Nyman.

Allan Fredriksson could not keep from smiling a little.