Black Lies, Red Blood

Eight

The building manager let the two police officers in without apparent excitement.

“What’d he do?” he asked again.

“Nothing,” said Sammy Nilsson flatly, for the third time.

“But something?”

“Yes, something for sure, but nothing we know about!” Morgansson responded. “Now you can go. We’ll shut the door behind us when we leave.”

Anders Brant’s apartment consisted of two rooms, a kitchen, and a minimal bathroom. Sammy Nilsson and Morgansson remained standing a moment in the hall, apparently indecisive, before they pulled on their protective clothing and gloves.

“I guess I’ll try to secure a print to start with,” said Morgansson, entering the kitchen with his bag.

Sammy Nilsson started in the combination bedroom/office. There was a bed in the middle of the room, made with the spread neatly on top. The walls were covered with books from floor to ceiling, except the one long wall, in front of the window facing the courtyard, where a board was mounted on a pair of sawhorses.

There was not much on the makeshift desk: an old-fashioned file holder next to some piles of books, a jar with various pens, a notepad, and a mug with remnants of dried coffee. No computer, but a router with blinking green lights.

There were two file cabinets under the desk. Sammy pulled out a drawer full of papers and plastic folders in various colors with a sticker in the right corner. The one on top was labeled Agrofuel.

He pulled out drawer after drawer. Mostly computer printouts and newspaper clippings, but the bottom drawer to the right was full of office supplies-a hole punch, a stapler, a box of paper clips, and other things you would expect to find in a home office.

Sammy Nilsson did not feel inclined to go through all the papers, even if he realized he would have to do a quick browse. But he left the desk for the time being and took a look at the bookshelves. Quite a lot of fiction, Sammy noticed some titles he had too. The National Encyclopedia and various other reference works and dictionaries took up an entire section. There was also what Sammy assessed as “political literature,” a lot about environmental issues and globalization, strikingly many in English.

A thinker, Sammy decided, and left the room. The living room was easy to survey. A lounge suite consisting of a 1960s-era leather couch and two armchairs that were certainly trendy but looked needlessly uncomfortable, a teak coffee table decorated with some tea lights on a ceramic plate, a TV and DVD player on an IKEA shelf, a tall floor lamp with a brass base and three lampshades-Sammy’s parents had one like it-a storage unit that housed a BW brand stereo system, and a collection of CDs, mostly blues and classical music. A pair of speakers were mounted on the wall.

That was all. Borderline impersonal, Sammy thought. Easily taken care of was his next thought, and that granted him some consolation, considering all the papers in the other room.

“Find anything?” he yelled toward the kitchen.

“Just one print so far, and I assume it’s Brant’s,” Morgansson answered.

Sammy Nilsson sat down in an armchair and had his prejudices confirmed.

If Brant really had visited Bosse Gränsberg’s trailer on Monday, the same day Gränsberg was killed, he was in a bad way. But what motive could there be?

Sammy’s thought process was interrupted by the technician, who was standing in the doorway. In his hand he was holding the new prints.

“It’s him,” he said curtly.

“Are you dead sure?”

Morgansson did not answer, but looked at Sammy with a blank face and turned on his heels. A new Ryde, thought Sammy. Eskil Ryde was the former head of the tech squad, now retired. He had always been dead sure.

Sammy got up with effort from the clearly defectively designed armchair and returned to the bedroom, positioned himself to stare at the bed, and carefully raised the spread. He folded back the blanket just as carefully and viewed the sheets below.

On the nightstand, with a small drawer that he only noticed now, was a book by Samir Amin. God, what a serious guy, thought Sammy Nilsson, pulling out the drawer. Inside was a half-empty package of a foreign brand of chewing gum-Sammy had an impulse to sample it-and an open package of condoms.

Originally it had contained twenty condoms; four remained. Otherwise in the drawer there was a subway ticket-Sammy Nilsson guessed New York-some pens and a small pocket calendar for 2006, which he quickly browsed through. It was jotted full of tiny but completely legible text, about meetings and conferences, dental appointments, and other trivia that fills a person’s everyday life. Exactly to the day one year ago Anders Brant had made a call to a woman. In any event there was a reminder there with three exclamation points: Call Rose!!! Sammy looked around for a phone and found it stuffed into the bookshelf.

He peeked at the sheets again; the sight made an almost too intimate impression. It bothered him that now they were violating a person’s integrity. Then he turned his attention to the desk. He shuddered at the thought of the piles of papers, but started with what seemed most current, the files on the desk.

Everything was neatly labeled, apparently research material, perhaps the basis for articles. A mixture of computer printouts, handwritten notes, and newspaper clippings.

The first folder contained a number of texts in Russian and was marked Putin the second file simply MST, it too filled with texts in a foreign language, probably Spanish. Under it was a file with an abbreviation equally unknown to Sammy, and whose contents were surprisingly like the others. Once again in the same language.

Morgansson came into the room.

“Anything exciting?”

Sammy turned and held up a plastic folder.

“Working materials, presumably,” he said, holding out the thick bundle.

The technician browsed a little.

“Most of it’s in Portuguese,” he said, handing back the file.

Are you sure, Sammy was about to say, but caught himself and nodded.

“The kitchen?”

“Nothing remarkable. Reasonably clean and tidy, everything washed, the refrigerator emptied as if he were just leaving on a trip, no waste bag. I’ve found two different prints, his own and one other, left on a vase and on the front of the stove.”

“Where the hell is the guy?” said Sammy Nilsson. “I don’t like this.”

Morgansson sneered.

“I mean, we barge in on a completely unknown person. Think about it. Do we really have reason to trespass?”

“We’ll have to see,” said the technician, showing no great enthusiasm to pick up the thread.

“I mean-”

“I know what you mean,” said Morgansson. “Now I’ll do the bed.”

Sammy Nilsson nodded. From the courtyard outside the sound of a heavy truck was heard. He went over to the window. It was the tow truck that would bring in Brant’s car. Alongside him stood the building manager, who was saying something to Nyman. The trainee stretched, made a gesture as if to move Nilsson aside, waved with his other hand to the driver of the tow truck, as if he needed any assistance to back into a wide open area, thought Sammy Nilsson. The only thing that might get in the way was probably Nyman himself.

Sammy Nilsson turned away. He could not shake his aversion. They were treating Brant as a possible suspect and on very flimsy grounds at that. It was now clear that he had visited Gränsberg’s trailer, and there was much that suggested he had done so the day the murder was committed. The fact that he travels abroad the following morning may be flight but just as easily a planned trip. That he booked it as long as a few days before departure meant nothing.

A journalist, thought Sammy Nilsson, a politically oriented freelancer, would he kill a homeless former scaffolder? Well, unexpected things happen, he reasoned further, but the probability, how great was it?

“Listen, do you think Brant is our guy?”

Morgansson stopped, still leaning over, turned his head, and observed his colleague.

“No,” he said, somewhat unexpectedly for Nilsson, but did not develop his viewpoint.

“I’ll be in the living room,” said Sammy.

Morgansson nodded and continued his work.

Nilsson sat down in the other armchair with a vague hope that it might be somewhat more comfortable, and continued thinking. He could hear the tow truck leaving the parking area.

Morgansson came into the living room a few minutes later and sat down in the other chair.

“He hasn’t changed the sheets for a while,” the technician observed. “I’ve secured two different types of hair, one light and one very dark. There are stains besides, probably semen, on one of the pillows.”

“My God,” said Sammy Nilsson.

“Maybe she had a pillow under her ass,” said Morgansson.

Then a few minutes of unforced silence followed. That was one good thing about the guy from northern Sweden, thought Nilsson, he knew the art of keeping quiet without making it feel strange. But it was Morgansson who broke the silence.

“So, what do you think about Haver?”

Sammy looked up with surprise.

“What should I think about him?”

“I’m sure you’ve noticed how difficult he’s been, mostly goes around sulking and snaps at everyone. I think Beatrice is really sick and tired of it.”

“I guess he’s tired and worn out,” said Nilsson, feeling some discomfort.

“We all are more or less,” said the technician. “This is different.”

“He’ll probably get out of his slump,” said Nilsson.

“I think it’s on the home front,” Morgansson continued, who obviously did not want to let go of the topic.

“With Rebecka, you mean?”

Morgansson nodded.

“We know nothing about that,” said Nilsson, and now his tone was plainly unsympathetic.

“Maybe it’s something with Lindell?”

“What?”

“She hasn’t been herself either recently.”

“You mean that Ola and Ann might be together?”

“Depends on what you mean by together, I don’t know,” Morgansson retreated.

“Well, you know her better than most,” said Nilsson.

Morgansson’s cheeks immediately turned red. He’s jealous, that bastard, thought Nilsson. Lindell and the technician had had a brief affair, shortly after Morgansson moved there from Umeå.

“She seems to be off her game,” said Morgansson. “Completely absent for long periods.”

“It’s Klara Lovisa that’s haunting her.”

Morgansson shook his head.

“It’s love,” he said.

“And the reason is Haver, you think? That those two would… and that Haver is thinking about divorce, is that what you’re thinking?”

“Something like that,” said Morgansson.

Sammy Nilsson shook his head.

“Never,” he decided, getting up from the chair.

Morgansson laughed awkwardly.

“Nice chairs,” he said, patting the armrest.