The Princess of Burundi

Twenty-one

Ann Lindell was zipping Erik into his snowsuit. His eyes followed her attentively. She paused for a moment. Which one of us does he look like? she wondered. Me or his father? The engineer with whom she had spent one night and never seen again. He didn’t even know he had become a father-how could he? Perhaps he had seen her around town, at the height of her pregnancy, and figured it out. But men aren’t that smart, she thought, and smiled. Erik smiled back.

“But you’re smart,” she said and helped his tiny fingers through the sleeve.

She had made an appointment with the pediatrician. Erik had patches of an itchy rash that had come and gone for about month and she wanted to know what it was. Her parents were coming up for Christmas and her mother would be bound to pester her about it. For this reason alone it would be good to see the doctor.

She took out the stroller and decided to walk. She was heavier now than before the pregnancy. Her breasts and thighs had swelled up and her formerly taut stomach was softly rounded. She wasn’t particularly concerned about it but she knew that a woman her age easily puts on a pound here and a pound there, only to end up overweight and immobile.

The weight gain was surely connected to her new lifestyle. She moved around less now, ate more frequently and in larger portions. It had become one of her weaknesses to help herself to a little extra, to indulge in rich food. Her social life had never been very extensive, but now she rarely socialized with anyone. She enjoyed staying at home watching TV, eating a good cheese with crackers, or perhaps ice cream. She was surprised at how quickly she had adjusted to this life. Of course, she missed her work, the stress, chatting with her colleagues, and the excitement of moving among so many people. At the start of her maternity leave she had felt a big relief, but now she was getting restless.

She was no longer in charge of any investigations, did not attend any morning meetings, and was never woken up by calls relating to violence and misery. She felt released from responsibility. Erik was a surprisingly easy baby. If she kept him on a reasonably regular schedule, he was content. He didn’t have even a hint of colic. The first real problem, if you could call it that, was this rash.

Ann was in town after twenty minutes. She was sweating inside her coat. Earlier she had rarely worn a coat, preferring a short jacket or just a sweater.

“You’re turning into a real lady,” Ottosson had said when she last came down to the station for a visit.

“He means a real old lady,” Sammy Nilsson had added.

They had looked at her in a way they had never done before, or so it seemed to her. She didn’t know what she thought of that. She was proud to be a mother. To be caring for a son on her own. It was no grand achievement, she knew, it was something that millions of mothers had done throughout the ages, and most often without the help of a maternity ward and one-year checkups, but in this matter it was she, Ann Lindell, who was the mother. No one else, neither man nor woman, could take this point of pride from her. She knew it was an old-fashioned and ridiculous thought, but in some way she felt she had been judged good enough. She had been taken up in the ranks of all mothers, living and dead. It was an exclusive club, automatically excluding half of humanity and many others besides, those who could not or did not want to give birth.

Was it the same for men? she wondered. She sensed that she knew too little about them to be able to say. Of course she had met fathers pushing baby carriages with that exalted, almost silly expression, but did it feel the same for them? She had no man to ask. Edvard, the man she had been closest to, had been pained by a lack of contact with his two boys. But he was the one who had left them. Would a woman have been able to escape the way he had done? She was getting tired of these quasi-philosophical homemade analyses but couldn’t shake them off entirely. She knew they provided her with a way of dealing with her loneliness and frustration. For all her intoxication with the wonders of motherhood, she remained alone.

To give birth to a child and watch him develop was a wonderful experience, but at the same time it was rather boring. This was the word she used to herself. She missed the excitement of police work. She now understood more fully why she had chosen this career. It was not so much for idealistic reasons as for the tension, the anticipation of the unknown, the extraordinary, the feeling of playing a furious game where the stakes were nothing short of life and death.

Shortly after one o’clock she arrived at the children’s clinic and was shown into an office to see Katrin, a nurse-practitioner she had met several times before. She liked Katrin, a little woman in gold-colored sandals. She had talked to Ann about mastitis, and about the mixture of emptiness, longing, relief, and freedom that accompanies the absence of menstruation. She and Ann got along.

Ann was still nursing Erik but thinking seriously of weaning him. He refused to nurse on the left breast, which had now gone down to its normal shape, while the one on the right had ballooned up as big as a soccer ball. Ann often felt like a cow. She wanted to retain the closeness of nursing but also wanted her breasts back. Lately Erik had also taking to biting her.

She removed Erik’s clothing and showed Katrin the rash on his chest and back. Katrin studied them carefully and then said she thought they were a reaction to something Ann was eating.

“Think carefully about what you’re having,” she said. “Erik is reacting to something in your diet. If it were summer I would guess strawberries.”

“I’m fond of Indian food,” Ann said. “Could that be it? There’s lots of cumin and ginger in Indian food.”

“No, I think spicy food would more likely cause a stomachache.”

“And you’re sure it’s not a virus?” Ann asked, feeling helpless. She had grabbed on to this idea from the woman who ran the drop-in playgroup, a group she sometimes attended not because she really liked it but because she felt it was part of the experience.

“No, I don’t think so. Not with you still nursing him.”

Ann agreed to keep close track of what she was eating and to watch for any changes in Erik’s rash.

They sat and talked for another thirty minutes. Katrin was someone who did not shy away from asking personal questions. She intuited Ann’s bafflement in her new role as mother, probably because she had seen it before, but her penetrating questions were posed with such gentle tact that Ann felt completely relaxed. Katrin had an ability to give advice that never felt like criticism.

They said good-bye in the corridor. Ann turned and waved after a few steps, taking Erik’s hand and letting him wave too. Katrin looked suddenly shy, but held up her hand.

Ann stepped out into the weak December sun, which was now sinking ever more rapidly into the horizon, and felt a wave of gratitude. She continued on down the street and decided to stop by the station. She checked the time: shortly before two. Ottosson was probably in, and he would likely take the time to have a cup of tea and a chat.

The door was open and Lindell looked in. Ottosson was sitting at his desk, his gaze fixed on a piece of paper in front of him. She heard him humming. Then he turned the page and sighed.

“Is this a bad time?”

Ottosson flinched, looked up, and the momentary confusion gave way to a smile.

“Did I startle you?”

“No, what I was reading startled me.”

He didn’t say anything else, but he studied her.

“You look blooming with health,” he said.

Lindell smiled. He always told her that, even when she felt terrible.

“What are you doing?”

Ottosson ignored the question, instead asking her where Erik was.

“He’s sleeping in his stroller just outside your door.”

The chief got up and Lindell saw that his back pain had returned.

“It would be a pity to miss an opportunity to complain,” he said when he noticed her gaze.

They walked out together and looked at the baby. Another colleague was walking by and he also looked into the stroller. Ottosson started humming again but didn’t say anything.

“He’ll be one soon,” Lindell said. “Well, ‘soon’ is relative, I guess.”

Ottosson nodded.

“My wife sends her regards, by the way. She was talking about you the other day.”

Lindell pushed the stroller into Ottosson’s office and he shut the door.

“It’s your usual festive pre-Christmas season here,” he said. “We have a murder in Libro and a lunatic intruder in Sävja, with a possible connection between the two events. Little John, the woman, and the loony-his name is Vincent Hahn-were classmates in high school. I’ve just been reading through the few items we have on Hahn. He seems remarkable, to say the least. Complains about every little thing. We’ve recovered five thick folders containing copies of letters he’s sent over the years, with the accompanying replies from various companies and state departments.”

“Has he had run-ins with us before?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“How strong is the connection to John?”

“Not more than their school, which could be mere coincidence. But the murder could also mark the start of some private revenge scheme. We’re trying to get our noses in everyone’s business. John’s widow has never heard of Hahn.”

“And what about John’s brother?”

“We haven’t been able to reach him for a while.”

Lindell felt the thrill of suspense. After only a few minutes of talk she was back.

“As I recall, Lennart was a fairly unsympathetic character,” she said. “Loudmouthed and arrogant.”

“He has his bad sides, to be sure,” Ottosson said. “But it’s clear he’s mourning his brother. He appears to be staying sober and I think he’s doing his own investigating. You know Nilsson, Johan Sebastian, the one Sammy is in touch with, he called and told us.”

Lindell had always had trouble tolerating informants, but Johan Sebastian Nilsson ‘Bach,’ as he was called, gave them plenty of tidbits, so it only made sense to overlook his dubious character.

There was a loud thud from the window and both Ottosson and Lindell jumped. A few small downy feathers stuck to the windowpane.

“Poor bastard,” Ottosson said. He had walked over to the window and was looking down to see if he could spot the bird.

“It’s probably okay,” Lindell said.

“It’s the third time in just a few weeks,” Ottosson said in a worried tone. “I don’t understand why they keep flying into my window.”

“You’re the chief,” Lindell said.

“It’s as if they’re looking for death,” Ottosson said.

“Maybe there’s something about the window that creates an optical illusion.”

“It’s hard not to see it as a sign,” he said and turned back to the window, where he remained for a moment.

Lindell looked at him and felt a sudden tenderness. She saw that his beard had more gray hairs and the pain in his back had made his posture stooped. He was the best chief she had ever had, but sometimes it was as if he didn’t have the energy anymore. Evil was exhausting him. A philosophical tone had sneaked into his argumentation, which in turn ceased to be focused on the crime in question and concentrated more on the underlying social reasons. This was also important, and all police officers pondered these things, but they couldn’t let it obscure the concrete tasks at hand.

“What do you think Lennart is up to?” she asked in an attempt to turn the conversation back to the present. Ottosson turned.

“What he’s up to? He’s probably looking in on a few pals. They were close, you know. There was a connection between them that was stronger than with most siblings, and it doesn’t surprise me in the least that he’s hunting his brother’s killer.”

“Tell me about Little John.”

Ottosson walked around the desk and sat down.

“Are you sure you don’t want some tea?”

Lindell shook her head.

“He wasn’t really all that smart,” her chief said. “He was a thinker in his own way, but my sense is his perspective was always too narrow. He focused in on one thing and grabbed on to it, as if he had neither the imagination nor courage to drop it, to try other thoughts.”

“Stubborn?”

“Very. To the degree that I actually admired him. And he really knew his fish. I think that saved him.”

“Or led to his death,” Lindell said, but regretted it when she saw his expression.

“It was an arena where he could be the best at something and I think he needed that. He probably suffered from low self-esteem his whole life. Berglund said something about this being about society, his upbringing. He came from a background where you weren’t supposed to try to be better than anyone else.”

“What do you mean?”

Ottosson got up and walked to the window again, let the blinds down, and adjusted them so that a little light still came in. But the room grew dimmer. A typical December day, Lindell thought. It was as if Ottosson read her thoughts, because before he sat back down he lit the three Advent candles on the windowsill.

“Pretty,” she said.

Ottosson smiled a crooked smile, pleased but a little embarrassed.

“You asked me what I mean,” he said. “Maybe John realized his environment was too narrow. You know he wanted more.”

“Sure, but I didn’t think he was dreaming of another life.”

Ottosson paused. Lindell sensed it was the first time he was airing these thoughts about Little John.

“What does his wife say?”

“Not much. She walks around in a fog. The boy is more complicated.”

Ottosson took no time to elaborate on this last statement but returned to the topic of the two brothers, Lennart and John. Berglund must have been the one who dug up this information, Lindell thought. He was the right one for this kind of job. A little older, native to Uppsala, and with a calm and reassuring demeanor. He was made for it. Sammy would never have been able to do it, nor would Beatrice. Possibly Haver.

And would Lindell have been able to walk around the city gaining the confidence of various members of the working-class population in order to establish a picture of the Jonsson brothers? It was doubtful.

There was a knock on the door and Sammy looked in.

“Hi, Ann,” he said quickly, then looked at Ottosson. “We’ve found something. The murder weapon, no less.”

“Little John’s?”

“Yes!”

He held up a clear plastic bag with a large knife.

“The youth patrol brought in a young guy. He had it on his person, tucked into the waist of his pants.”

“It’s big,” Lindell said.

“Twenty-one centimeters,” Sammy said, smirking. “Made in France.”

“Why was he brought in?”

“Some trouble in town. He had threatened a guy with it.”

“Is he our man?”

“I know him from before, but I doubt it. He’s fifteen and a real troublemaker but no killer.”

“Capable of manslaughter?”

Sammy shook his head.

“Immigrant?”

“No, as Swedish as they come. Mattias Andersson. He lives with his mother in Svartbäcken.”

“What makes you think this is the murder weapon?”

“John’s blood is on the blade and the handle,” Sammy said. “Bohlin was the one who noticed the stains and demanded an analysis.”

“Bohlin in the youth patrol?”

“That’s the one.”

“That was a smart decision,” Ottosson. “What does Mattias Andersson have to say?”

“We’re bringing him here right now.”

He glanced at Lindell and she thought she could see a triumphant expression on his face but told herself it was her imagination. Sammy’s cell phone rang at that moment. He answered, listened, and ended the conversation with an “okay.”

“They’re coming in the door now,” he said and took a step out the door. Then he turned and looked at Lindell.

“Do you want to be there?”

“Where?”

“When we question Mattias.”

“I have the little one with me,” she said and nodded in the direction of the stroller, which Sammy hadn’t noticed before.

“Leave him with me,” said Ottosson.