Black Lies, Red Blood

Four

The visit to “The Grotto” had produced an identity, an ex-wife, and a handful of names that might be characterized as Bo Gränsberg’s friends, or at least acquaintances.

The manager of the refuge for the homeless, Camilla Olofsson, looked at the photograph of the dead man for a long time.

“Bosse was a considerate man,” she said at last, but neither Ola Haver or Beatrice Andersson took her words at face value. It was a common reaction; very few people wanted to say anything bad about a dead person. Instead their positive qualities would usually be emphasized.

“He was considerate,” the manager repeated. “He helped out. He was handy too. Nothing was left undone. I remember when we were going to… it doesn’t matter.”

Ola Haver stepped aside. Beatrice took a step closer.

“No one deserves to die like that,” she said.

Camilla Olofsson nodded resolutely.

“Can you help us? We need a list of names, persons who maybe can tell us about Bosse, what he did, who he associated with, what plans he had.”

“Plans,” the manager said flatly, fixing her gaze somewhere far away. “He was happier recently,” she said at last. “It seemed more positive, life, I mean. He came here a couple years ago, when he was really bad off. Then it went up and down.”

“But now he was happier,” Beatrice observed. “Did he say anything that explained-”

“No, nothing. Bosse didn’t talk much. He kept most of it inside. He was trying, you could see that, but it was a struggle. He never recovered after the divorce. And then the injury, of course.”

“What injury?”

“I don’t really know how it happened, but he fell on the job, he was a construction worker. He broke his one arm and shoulder. Sometimes I could see that he was in pain.”

“Do you know the name of his ex?”

“Gunilla Lange. I think she lives in Svartbäcken. I have a brother who lives up there and I’ve seen Gunilla around there a few times. She’s been here a few times, dropped off clothes and that sort of thing. I liked her. I think she cared about Bosse too. She asked how he was doing. Maybe he was too proud to take any help from her, so she donated clothes here instead. Maybe they were his old clothes, what do I know?”

“He never talked about a job or apartment, or anything like that?”

Camilla Olofsson looked at the police officer.

“Job and apartment,” she sniffed. “You don’t know what life is like for these men and women.”

“No, I don’t,” said Beatrice. “But you do. That’s why I’m talking with you.”

“Why the hell does he have to die for all of you to get interested?” said Camilla.

Besides Gunilla Lange’s name, they also got a list of a few names-five men and a woman. According to Camilla Olofsson it was likely that the men on the list would show up at “The Grotto” later in the day.

Beatrice Andersson phoned Berglund, who promised to spend a few hours of the afternoon at “The Grotto,” to possibly make contact with a few people who could provide information about Bosse’s recent doings.

Am I grieving for him? She had repeated the question silently to herself since the police left her. They must have talked at least a couple of hours, then shook hands and said good-bye. The female police officer was sweet, complimented her on the curtains, asked whether she had sewn them herself. Not everyone noticed such things. The other one’s gaze had wandered, as if he was ashamed or afraid of her.

Yes, I’m grieving, she decided. I am grieving the life we could have had. For sixteen years they had been married, for two periods, like a soccer match. A long first half, which lasted twelve years, was good. Then came the accident.

They had no children. She mourned for that. Maybe him too. Of course that’s how it was. He loved kids. During all those years they had barely talked about it. They were both responsible for their childlessness, so why should they gab about it? She knew, purely rationally, that it was idiotic, but after the abortion, when she was nineteen, an intervention that he had supported, she saw childlessness as a punishment. She-they-had a chance, and they blew it.

Would things have been different with a child? Doubtful. Children were love, but not life, she had heard a girlfriend say once, and that phrase had etched itself into her awareness.

Their lives, mainly Bosse’s, had developed along a path that no one could have foreseen. He had always been a proud man, and that would become his great torment. Pride was easy to bear as long as he had something to be proud of, but then what?

She told the police about his work, about the years when he came home sober, full of life, and just proud. He worked hard and made good money. And then: a single nerve in his body that was torn apart and made him useless as a scaffolder. Unable to raise his arm. The pain. Being useless, looking up at the facades and knowing.

“How did it happen?” the male police officer asked, the first time he had shown any deeper interest in Bosse’s fate.

She told about the accident and how it had upset Bosse’s life forever, and along with it their life together. He could not blame anyone, it was his own mistake, his eagerness to get it done quickly, that doomed him to idleness. He cursed his own clumsiness, called himself an “amateur.”

Like so many others he chose liquor. He said “booze,” never alcohol or more specifically vodka, gin, or whiskey. Booze it would be. She thought it sounded crude, but that was probably the point. There was nothing sophisticated, nothing enjoyable in Bosse’s drinking habits. Booze was oblivion. Booze was hate. Booze was separation from life.

She got up, went over to the window, and looked out over the yard. In the background was a glimpse of the newly constructed police building. They didn’t have far to go to convey their message. How could anyone work as a police officer? A high-rise full of crime, hate, lies, guilt, and sorrow. She should have asked how they put up with it, but suspected there was no good answer.

The clock in the living room struck one. Soon Bernt would come, he was taking off early to visit the construction industry health office later in the afternoon. They would have scalloped potatoes and fried pork loin. She would tell about Bosse’s death. Bernt would not ask many questions. She understood that deep inside he would be relieved, perhaps even happy. He was jealous that someone else had been so significant in her life, before she and Bernt met, a kind of retroactive jealousy that she never understood. Bernt had also been married before and talked freely and easily about his former wife.

He would not want to see her tears or listen to her stories. And she would try to please him. Cry now, not later, she thought. And she cried, cried over a wasted life. Bosse’s. And perhaps her own, she wasn’t sure. Her demands on existence had never been all that great, but she sensed that there was another way to live.

From the oven came the aroma of the casserole. She took out the pork and started cutting it up into slices. He liked them thin and only lightly fried. Suddenly her movements stopped. The police wanted her to come to the morgue and identify her former husband.

“You are the next of kin, from what we understand,” the female police officer had said.

So it was, she thought, I was and am his next of kin. The police would pick her up at three o’clock.

How many slices will he want? The sight of the pork nauseated her. She set the knife aside. How did he die? It had not occurred to her to ask about that. What if they’d made a mistake and the dead man was someone else?

After the visit with Gunilla Lange, Ola Haver and Beatrice Andersson decided to look up the other woman on the list, for the simple reason that she was the only one with a permanent address, on Sköldungagatan in Tunabackar.

Ingegerd Melander was drunk, not conspicuously, but enough to make Haver feel uncomfortable. It was still only the middle of the day. He was immediately seized with antipathy, studied the woman’s slightly worn features, the wrinkles that ran like half-moons on her cheeks, and which deepened when she screwed up her face to conceal her intoxication. This had the opposite effect.

Her hair was pulled up in a ponytail, which still made her look a bit girlish. Behind the ravaged face Haver could sense a woman who had once been really attractive.

“I’m going to the store,” she said for no reason when they introduced themselves.

“We’re here for Bosse Gränsberg,” said Ola Haver.

Beatrice glanced furtively at him.

“May we come in and talk a little?”

Ingegerd Melander shook her head lightly and her noticeable confusion increased, but she stepped to one side to let them in.

They sat down at the kitchen table. Beatrice did not say anything about curtains, because there weren’t any. The kitchen was otherwise strangely clinically clean. Not a gadget to be seen on the kitchen counter, the table, or other surfaces; no potted plants adorned the windowsill. The only thing that suggested any human activity was a wall calendar from Kjell Pettersson’s Body Shop. Ola Haver noted that yesterday’s date was circled in red.

“I have some bad news,” Beatrice Andersson began.

“It always is where Bosse is concerned,” said the woman.

“But you haven’t had a visit from us before on his account, have you?”

The woman shook her head.

“What’s he done?”

“Nothing, as far as we know,” said Ola Haver. “He’s dead.”

At that moment he loathed himself and his work. The impulse to get up and rush out of the apartment was almost too much for him.

The woman’s body contracted as if she had been given an electric shock, and she collapsed across the kitchen table, as if she were an inflatable doll someone had stuck a pin in. Just then the outside door opened, and they heard someone calling, “Hello in there!”

Beatrice leaned over the kitchen table and placed her hand on the woman’s trembling shoulder. Ola Haver stood up. A man came into the kitchen whom Ola Haver immediately thought he recognized.

“What the hell are you doing here?” said the man.

In his eyes there was a mixture of surprise, suspicion, and fury.

“My name is Ola Haver and I’m a police officer.”

“I can see that!”

“We have some bad news.”

“You always do,” said the man.

He glanced over Haver’s shoulder.

“What have you done to Ingegerd?”

“Bosse Gränsberg is dead,” said Haver.

“Huh?”

The man swallowed.

“Dead?”

Haver nodded.

“What the hell! Why’s that? Did he kill himself?”

“No, someone else killed him.”

Ola Haver saw the scene before him: Bo Gränsberg lying in the gravel.

Ingegerd Melander suddenly sat up, raised herself halfway, one hand resting heavily on the kitchen table while the other pointed at the man. Her hand was shaking. Her whole body was shaking.

A string of saliva ran from the corner of her mouth. Her face was beet red and her cheeks wet with tears. Hate, thought Ola Haver. That’s what hate looks like. She wanted to scream something but there was only sound somewhere far down in her throat, and she lowered her hand.

“That was why,” she mumbled.

“What do you mean why?”

“I turned forty.”

Ola Haver glanced at the calendar. She sank down on the chair. Haver signaled with his hand that the man should follow him into the living room.

“What the hell is this?”

“Murder,” said Ola Haver. “Bosse was murdered.”

“I don’t understand a thing,” said the man.

“What’s your name?”

“Johnny Andersson. Why?”

What a nutcase, thought Haver. He recognized the name from the list they got from Camilla Olofsson at “The Grotto.”

“So you knew Bosse too,” he said. “What do you think happened?”

“Me? How should I know?”

“When did you last see him?”

Johnny Andersson suddenly looked scared.

“You don’t think…”

“Answer the question,” said Haver, not able to hold back his fatigue and irritation. From the kitchen loud sobbing was heard.

“A couple days ago,” said Johnny sullenly. “You can’t just storm in here like the fucking Gestapo-”

“Where and when?”

“We met in town. It was last Sunday, maybe.”

“What time?”

“In the morning.”

“What were you doing?”

“We just ran into each other. You know, down at S:t Per.”

Haver nodded. The little square in the middle of downtown where he and Rebecka used to meet when they were going to do something together. “See you by the fountain,” she always said.

“How was he?”

“Well, same as usual. We talked a little. He was like he usually was… what should I say? A little bent.”

“Bent?”

“It’s like he curled himself up, made himself smaller than he was.”

“He was a hundred eighty-six centimeters,” said Haver for no reason.

“Right, that tall.”

The man seemed to ponder the fact that there was at least ten centimeters difference between the dead man and himself.

“He didn’t seem worried, agitated, or depressed, or anything?”

“Where that’s concerned, was concerned, Bosse made you guess.”

“One thing,” said Haver, lowering his voice. “Did Bosse and”-he made a movement with his head toward the kitchen-“did they have a relationship?”

Johnny Andersson looked to the side. Now he’s going to lie, thought Haver.

“Yes, before.”

“When was before?”

“A month or two ago, maybe.”

“They broke up then?”

Johnny nodded. Haver was not equally convinced that he had been served a lie, perhaps mostly because that lie would crack easily. He sensed that Johnny was interested in the woman in the kitchen. There was something in his attitude, but maybe mostly the tone he used in the cheerful call when, so free and easy, without ringing the doorbell, he stepped into the apartment.

“Who ended that relationship?”

“Ingegerd.”

“In other words, Bosse was unhappy. Was there a rival?”

Johnny shook his head.

“Not as far as I know,” he said.

There was the lie, thought Haver.

When the two police officers left Sköldungagatan they felt dejected. The mood did not lighten until they came to the crossing with Luthagsleden.

“Sometimes it’s better when there are two of us,” said Beatrice Andersson at last.

Haver nodded. Beatrice turned right.

“Bosse and Ingegerd had a relationship previously,” said Haver.

“Yes, she told me that. She thought that he would congratulate her on her birthday anyway.”

“Why did she break up with him?”

“Too much partying, she maintained. The strange thing, or Ingegerd thought it was strange, was that Bosse had stayed sober since the day she broke off the relationship. Stone sober.”

“He wanted to become a better person and make everything all right,” said Haver, catching himself using a careless, almost belittling tone.

Beatrice squinted at him.

“How are things at home?” she asked mercilessly.

“What do you mean?”

“Do you want to become a better person and make everything all right too?”

Haver looked at her and the fury made him clench his fists.

“Admit it,” said Beatrice. “I have eyes and ears. You’re feeling terrible. You’re not doing well.”

“What does that have to do with you?”

“It affects your job.”

When the light turned green at Sysslomansgatan she gunned the engine and took off long before the other motorists.

“And mine,” she added.

“Up yours,” said Ola Haver.

Beatrice made a quick left turn onto Rackarbergsgatan and slammed on the brakes so that Haver was thrown forward and caught by the safety belt.

“Listen,” she said, turning toward her colleague. “You need to cool down! We work together. We depend on each other. I can take a lot, but when I see that it’s affecting people we meet in our work, then it’s gone too far. Right now you are not a good policeman, do you see that?”

Haver stared straight ahead. More than anything he wanted to get out of the car.

“We know each other well, we’ve worked together for many years, so I can be frank. You’re not a trainee, you’re an experienced, capable detective. So act like one.”

Shut up, he thought, but said nothing. Beatrice did not let herself be silenced by his stone face.

“Take sick leave if you’re feeling shitty. Go somewhere. Do something you think is fun. In the worst case, get a divorce!”

She pushed forward the gear shift and the car rolled off up the hill. They had intended to check on an address in Stenhagen, where a former coworker of Bosse Gränsberg lived. A man whom Gunilla Lange knew was on long-term disability and whom Bosse often talked about. According to his ex-wife, they had seen each other several times during the last month.

But as if by unspoken agreement they returned, in icy silence, to the police building.