The Princess of Burundi

Twenty-eight

Allan Fredriksson read through Ryde’s report from Vivan Molin’s apartment. There was nothing noteworthy. The place was full of Vincent Hahn’s fingerprints.

The only thing they had found in the apartment that made Fredriksson raise his eyebrows was a pair of handcuffs that the technicians had found stuffed away in a closet, together with two porn films and a vibrator. Battery-operated with two speed settings, Ryde had noted.

They were still establishing her network of friends and relatives. Her parents were dead and she had no siblings. There was a note in her address book about an “Aunt Bettan” and a phone number with a 021 area code. They had called it, with no results yet. Fredriksson had asked a cadet, a Julius Sandemar, to contact Hahn’s brother again. He seemed to be the only one who would be able to give them more information about possible relatives. He would also need to be informed that Vincent was now wanted for suspected assault and murder.

Someone threw out the idea that Hahn might try to leave the country and look up his brother in Israel, but it turned out that Hahn had never applied for a passport. Nonetheless, officials at Arlanda airport were notified to be on their guard.

Fredriksson had no idea where Hahn might have gone. Strange, he thought. A person without any social network. Where does a person without any contacts go? To a bar? He had trouble seeing Hahn nursing a drink in a bar. To the library? More plausible. Sandemar would have to go down to the public library and show the employees there a photo of Hahn. Was there a branch in Sävja? Fredriksson didn’t think so. Many of the smaller branches were being closed down.

They had checked the clinic in Sävja and the Akademiska Hospital, but no patient had ever registered under the name Hahn. He had been treated for depression at Ulleråker mental institution, but that was eight years ago. The doctor who had treated him had moved elsewhere.

The search of his apartment had also yielded almost no clues. Fredriksson suspected that Hahn would eventually turn up somewhere, but sitting around merely waiting for a killer to turn up was not his style. He wanted to track him down, but he was running out of ideas.

A traditional criminal was easier, his hangouts and associates more predictable. A psychically disturbed individual, a loner, was much more difficult to find. On the other hand, in Fredriksson’s experience, once the ball was rolling they were easier to catch because they were more likely to be careless and make mistakes.

Fredriksson was convinced that they were looking for two different murderers at this point. It was really only Sammy Nilsson who insisted that Hahn had had something to do with Little John’s murder. His theory was that Hahn was taking revenge, maybe even for incidents that happened as long ago as his school days. Sammy didn’t think that the connection between John and Hahn was a coincidence and was still searching for a possible explanation. Ottosson let him be for the moment. Sammy had started looking up old classmates of John, Gunilla Karlsson, and Hahn. As it turned out, most of them still lived in Uppsala, and Sammy had already worked through a number of people on the list, but so far nothing had come out that would indicate that Hahn was on a rampage to revenge himself on them. But there could very well be some event in Vincent Hahn’s mind that would not seem like a motive for revenge in other people’s eyes.

After leaving his former sister-in-law’s apartment, Vincent Hahn had walked to Vaksalagatan and taken the bus into town. The hat he had stolen the night before covered his wound. He had found seven hundred kronor in her apartment and that was the extent of his funds. Now there was only one place for him to go.

The smell of people on the bus confused him and made him angry, but thinking about the rattling sound Vivan had made as he pulled the telephone cord tighter around her neck made him feel bigger. He could feel superior to the other people on the bus. They had nothing to do with him, they were small. He was big.

Vivan had assured him she wouldn’t tell on him, but he had seen in her eyes that she was lying. He had felt a rush of excitement while her body was convulsing under his. She had tried to scratch his face but hadn’t been able to reach. His knees had held her arms down. It was all over in a few minutes. He had pulled her along the floor and in under the bed and left her there to rot. They would find her when she started to stink, but not before. And by that time he’d be long gone.

He smiled. The feeling of satisfaction at having resolved everything so well filled him with an almost painful joy. Painful because he was unable to share it with anyone. But within a week he would get to read about it in the paper. Then people would know that Vincent Hahn was not to be treated lightly.

The headlines of the Upsala Nya Tidning at the railway station startled him. UPPSALA MURDER STILL UNSOLVED, it said. He stared at the black letters and tried to understand what it meant. Had Gunilla Karlsson died? But that wasn’t possible. Granted, she had collapsed in the yard outside the building, but it was he who had been closer to death. He bought the paper, pushed it down in his pocket, and hurried on. Some event was taking place in the plaza in front of the station. A dozen people or so dressed up as Santa were performing a dance of sorts. The small bells in their hands made tinkling sounds. Suddenly they all threw themselves to the ground and remained there, motionless. Vincent watched them, fascinated. One after another the Santas came back to life and joined hands to form a circle around the thirteenth Santa, who continued to lie on the ground.

“This is the darkness of Christmas,” shouted one of the Santas.

Vincent thought it must be a doomsday sect of some kind. He liked it. The sound of the bells followed him as he walked down Bangårdsgatan.

The bingo hall was unusually empty. He nodded at a few other regulars, but most of them were absorbed in their game. Vincent sat down in his usual spot and unfolded his newspaper. The first thing he saw was a picture of John Jonsson. The reporter summarized what had happened and presented a variety of motives. John’s colorful past was emphasized, the fact that he was a serious gambler alongside his burning passion for tropical fish.

A representative from the tropical-fish society had spoken out and declared John’s death a tragedy and an irreplaceable loss for the society and all cichlid lovers.

The paper, however, was more interested in John’s potential connections with Uppsala’s shady underworld and illegal gambling circuit.

Vincent read with great interest. He remembered John very well. He had been a short, quiet boy who inspired respect with his judicious use of words but was also insecure. He had lived not far from Vincent and in middle school they had often walked to school together. Vincent would walk quietly and sense that John appreciated the fact that he wasn’t chattering away.

Vincent put down the paper. The headache was coming back. He stared at the picture of his former classmate and wondered when he had died. Had he been included in Vincent’s plan for revenge? The bullies had to be punished. He flinched as if being struck. His father leaning over him, his mother’s whimpers from the kitchen, the repeated blows.

“No!” he shouted, and the other bingo players looked disapprovingly at him.

The blows rained down on him and he crouched to ward them off. Once he had struck back, but it had only made things worse. Now his father crawled around in his body like a parasite. John’s picture in the paper reminded him of his father, the blows meted out without words. Why had it been him? He was the youngest, the most defenseless. Wolfgang received the love, he the blows, the humiliation.

Had he murdered John? Vincent looked at the picture in the paper again. Perhaps the time had come for revenge. No one had cared. Where had his father’s rage come from, the rage that drove him to develop increasingly sadistic forms of punishment? In the beginning his fists had been enough, then came the strap, and finally the most horrific, the face forced down into the sink.

Vincent shook. The headache threatened to take over, to transform him into a crawling pile of bone and skin. You got what was coming to you, John. If it wasn’t me it was someone working in my spirit. He was sweating in the woolen cap. His head itched. He wanted to cry but knew his tear ducts didn’t work the way they were supposed to. He had stopped crying at the age of thirteen.

He rested his head in his hands and felt the gaze of others in the room. He should start playing. John was close-by. A neutral picture, without expression or clarity.

“You died,” he mumbled. Soon it would be Janne’s turn, or someone else. Vincent could no longer remember the rankings of the list he had drawn up. The picture of John in his mind was replaced by his father’s. He had woken up too late! When the time came for revenge, his father had disappeared into illness, the worms eating away at him until he was just a skeleton. Vincent remembered the thin hand gripping the hospital bed railing. He had taken it and squeezed it as hard as he could. His father had cried out, looked at him with watery eyes, and understood. Then he had smiled his satanic smile, the smile that seduced the women around him, and charmed the world, but Vincent knew better.

The picture in the paper of his father smiled at him and he tried to hit it. One of the bingo hall employees came over to him.

“You’ll have to go,” he said. “You’re disturbing the others.”

The voice was not unkind.

“I’ll go,” Vincent said submissively. “But my head hurts so much.” He pulled off his cap and revealed the makeshift bandage over the wound.

“What did you do?”

“My daddy hit me.”

“Your father did this?”

Vincent nodded.

“And my brother too.”

He stood up.

“I have to go now.”

“You should see a doctor,” the employee said.

“My father was a doctor, or something like that. Mommy spoke mainly German. She was Jewish and he a Nazi. Or communist, maybe. No, that can’t be. They’re red and Daddy was black.”

“Your father was black?”

Vincent staggered out onto the street. Bangårdsgatan was like a wind tunnel where the snow was swept along with a howling sound. People steeled themselves against the wind, pulling shawls, scarves, and hats more tightly around them. The sounds of their footsteps were muffled by the snow. An ambulance drove by. Then a series of trucks obscured the view. He wanted to be able to see farther and made his way to the river.