Black Lies, Red Blood

Thirty-six

Becalmed. A feeble wind from the south that was making a half-hearted attempt on Saturday morning to create a little movement in the air quickly gave up, settled down over the Uppsala plain, and created a trembling haze of heat over city and countryside.

Allan Fredriksson was sweating. He was upset besides. For the nth time in a row he was on duty over a weekend with brilliant weather, and he felt a major injustice.

The building was quiet. Everyone who could had fled of course. He was sitting in his office, tapping away on a report of a disturbance at the Central Station. The whole story was simple and predictable. Two loosely composed gangs had collided. Five personal injuries, one of which somewhat more serious, a knife in the buttock of a twenty-year-old youth from Märsta, eight police reports including damage, unlawful threat, unlawful possession of weapons, everyone blamed everyone else, what a life, five of them in jail, a real mess that only created paperwork, because he knew it would all run out in the sand. In six months, maybe a year, a few fines levied, possibly a suspended sentence for one of those involved, if that. The issue of guilt was not crystal clear.

No one was particularly worried, besides a Lebanese whose sausage stand was destroyed and an elderly woman who fell down the steps in the disturbance outside the railway station and broke her wrist.

Fredriksson wiped his brow with a napkin. This was really not his job. Why should he, an experienced detective, have to deal with such trifles when they had three murders on their agenda?

The whole procedure took two hours. Then he left the building and tried to think about considerably more pleasant things, horses that were running at Solvalla and hopefully crossed the finish line in the right order and made the cash register jingle.

Allan Fredriksson was a successful gambler who in just the past six months had pulled in over 150,000 kronor. The free time he did not spend in the forest he devoted to gambling programs and speculations and tips in the newspapers. The fact was that he also spent more and more of his work time thinking about horses.

Sometimes he thought about resigning to become a full-time gambler. He was casually acquainted with a few people who devoted their lives to harness and quarter horse racing, and they seemed to be thriving and living well. Why not? It seemed worry-free, no cocky, loudmouthed youths creating piles of paper, no weekend shifts, no nagging sensation that the job occasionally, and more and more often, was meaningless.

In an hour he would be meeting the on-duty prosecutor, Gunnel Forss, and decided to take a walk before that. He walked through Svartbäcken, followed Timmermansgatan, and made his way in among the villas north of Gamla Uppsalagatan. A climbing rose against a wall made him stop.

I’ll take Nelson Express, he decided, while he admired the luxuriant buds, and then moved on. His decision created a certain relief but also a tingling excitement, because the fourth run was a real hornet’s nest, and if that nail went in, the round could be very interesting and lucrative.

When he reached Sköldungagatan, a woman came walking toward him. He immediately recognized her and she obviously remembered him, because she slowed down and smiled carefully in recognition.

Allan Fredriksson, together with Beatrice Andersson, had gone with Gunilla Lange to the morgue to identify Bo Gränsberg, her ex-husband. He wondered what he should say; he could hardly thank her for their last encounter. But Gunilla Lange solved the problem by stopping and saying something about how amazing the weather in Sweden could be. Fredriksson agreed, even if he would probably spend the rest of the day indoors.

Gunilla Lange talked on about the weather. Fredriksson cursed his decision to take a walk on these particular blocks.

“I’ve been thinking about something,” she said after a brief pause.

“I see, and what might that be?” he said, trying to look interested.

“The last time I saw Bosse, it was only a couple of weeks before he died.”

Fredriksson nodded encouragingly.

“Well, he was happy somehow, or maybe excited. I thought it was strange, because otherwise it was mostly problems, the company he wanted to start, and that he didn’t have an apartment. He was always saying he was blacklisted by all the landlords. But this time he was optimistic, like he could be in the past. He said that he and Bergman, who he was going to start the company with”-another nod from Fredriksson-“now had everything as good as arranged. When I asked whether they had scraped enough money together, it costs a hundred thousand just to register a corporation, did you know that?”-nod-“he said that it would work out.”

“How is that?”

“I asked that too. There was talk that I was going to loan him a little. He started talking about an old buddy who was well-off, as he put it, someone who had more money than he needed.”

“And who could make a loan?”

“Yes, as far as I understood. Or even go in as part owner, but without working in the company. Bosse and Bergman really believed in it, that the company would make money and then someone else might come in-”

“Did he mention any names?”

“Well, he didn’t want to say who it was, but that I had met him. He was like that, Bosse, he liked to be a little secretive and then surprise you.”

She suddenly smiled, as if she were remembering the Bo Gränsberg she had once known.

“He gave no clues?”

Gunilla Lange shook her head.

“He said something about old times, but that can mean anything. Someone on the work team from before, was what I understood.”

“He said team?”

“That’s what I understood,” said Gunilla.

“How well do you, or did you, know his coworkers from construction?”

Gunilla Lange thought a moment before she answered.

“Not that well. I met some over the years, but not so that we socialized. Bosse probably had enough at work.”

“Maybe he meant the bandy team?”

She shook her head skeptically.

“Could it have been Anders Brant?”

“You mean the journalist? Would he be interested? That’s hard to believe. True, they played bandy together, and we saw each other quite a bit at that time. He had a girlfriend named Gunilla too, she and I worked together for a while besides. But he doesn’t have money, does he?”

“We know that Brant saw Bosse right before he died. Did he say anything about that?”

“No, not a word that he had seen Anders. It was strange. I mean, he should have mentioned it, he liked talking about the past, when he played bandy and that.”

The good times, thought Fredriksson. The unexpected meeting had, against expectations, improved his mood.

Fredriksson thought about the photo that Sammy Nilsson had taken from Brant’s apartment, and how he called around to everyone on the team.

“Did he mention anything about a Jeremias Kumlin?”

“I know who that is too,” Gunilla Lange replied.

“Sadly he was murdered yesterday,” said Fredriksson.

The news of the murder had appeared in Upsala Nya Tidning, but no name had been mentioned, as they had not yet been able to get hold of Kumlin’s mother. She was in northern Sweden. Henrietta Kumlin had a vague recollection that her mother-in-law had talked about Padjelanta, where she would be hiking with a friend. Ottosson had contacted the police in Jokkmokk and asked them to locate her in the wilderness.

Gunilla Lange was staring at him.

“It’s not true,” she exclaimed. “I saw that in the newspaper this morning, but that it was him… Poor Henrietta.”

“You know her?”

“We’ve met at a few parties, then, when everything… and they have two small children, a boy and a girl.”

“They’re almost grown up now,” said Fredriksson. “Can Kumlin be the one Bosse was talking about?”

Gunilla Lange had turned pale. There was nothing left of her initial light mood. Fredriksson understood that it no longer mattered that Sweden, on a day like this, was amazing.

They went their separate ways after a few minutes of additional small talk. Fredriksson had done his best to try to give Gunilla Lange back some of the carefree feeling she had shown only a few minutes earlier, but failed completely. Her day was ruined, he realized that, and he was not without a touch of bad conscience.

His day on the other hand looked brighter. Now nothing was left of his slow strolling gait, and he paid no attention to the gardens, but instead walked at a rapid pace toward the police building, with his eyes fixed a few meters ahead of him. His thoughts were circling around Gunilla’s scanty, but perhaps significant information.

He formulated various theories to himself, but wanted to talk this over with someone. There was no point in trying to get hold of Beatrice, she always made herself inaccessible, Sammy was in Tärnsjö, you couldn’t talk with Riis, Lindell seemed completely engulfed by the murder of Klara Lovisa, and Ottosson was presumably sitting in his summer house in Jumkil playing with the grandchildren.

He phoned Sammy Nilsson on his cell. Sammy answered immediately, as if he was expecting a call. He had not left yet, but would be leaving in a matter of minutes. He was packing the last few things in the car.

Sammy listened, hummed, and asked a few follow-up questions. Fredriksson thought he detected a satisfied tone in his comments and sensed why: the bandy lead, to which Sammy had devoted so much time, might perhaps prove to be a navigable road.

They both realized that Gunilla Lange’s meager information that someone from Bosse’s previous life had perhaps been prepared to put money into the company, could be a possibility, a thread to spin further on.

“It might be anyone,” said Fredriksson, to restrain Sammy’s growing enthusiasm. “Some old friend from work won at the track, or-”

“Or Jeremias Kumlin,” said Sammy.

“Or Anders Brant,” Fredriksson countered.

“Or Lasse Svensson, the restaurant owner,” Sammy continued. “I’m sure he has a few hundred bills over.”

“Then he would have said something about it when we talked.”

“Maybe he was hiding it,” said Sammy, not sounding completely convinced.

However much they talked back and forth they got no further. They were stuck in speculations. Fredriksson heard Sammy’s family talking in the background, an angry teenage voice and a car door slamming.

“Go ahead and head off for the sticks,” said Fredriksson generously.

They ended the call. Fredriksson had arrived at the police building, went in the main entrance, and took the elevator up to the waiting Forss.

But instead of the prosecutor, he encountered Beatrice Andersson and Berglund standing in the corridor outside Ottosson’s open door. Unlikely, he thought. Beatrice has a free Saturday, and Ottosson there besides. And Berglund! But then he understood the connection, Ottosson had called them in.

Beatrice turned around.

“Good that you came,” she said. “A few things have emerged. Kurt Johansson has started to talk a little.”

Who the hell is Kurt Johansson, wondered Fredriksson.