The Princess of Burundi

Twenty-nine

Lennart Jonsson was exhausted. It was half past four and dark outside as well as in the apartment. He let the apartment remain in darkness while he took off his clothes and let them fall in a pile. He was covered in dried sweat but it was not an unpleasant feeling. He brushed his hand over his hairy chest, across his left shoulder and left forearm. Some of his old musculature remained. He scratched his crotch and felt a stirring sensation of lust.

His back ached but he was so used to it that he hardly noticed it. He had some pills for arthritis relief left and decided to take one. On his way to the bathroom he noticed an unfamiliar scent. He stopped and sniffed. Perfume, an unmistakable smell of perfume.

He looked around. Someone had been in his apartment. Was the person still here? He snatched his pants up and started walking to the kitchen with the idea of finding something to defend himself with. Was he mistaken? No, the smell was undeniably here. Was it the scent of a woman or a man? He remained alert for any sounds.

He tiptoed into the kitchen, carefully pulled out a drawer, and took out a bread knife.

“Put it down,” he heard a voice say, “or you’ll regret it.”

The voice came from somewhere in the kitchen and Lennart realized that someone was sitting at the kitchen table. He recognized the voice but couldn’t place it in his confused state. He judged the threat as serious and didn’t hesitate in throwing down the knife.

“Who the hell are you?”

“I think it’s time you turned on the light.”

Lennart quickly pulled on his pants, then turned and switched on the light. Mossa was sitting at the table, a pistol laid out in front of him.

“You? What the hell-”

“Sit down. We need to talk.”

Lennart did as he was told. He sensed what was coming.

“It wasn’t me,” he said, and the Iranian smiled mockingly.

“That’s what they always say,” he said and took up the gun. “Tell me instead who ran straight to the cops.”

“Not me, in any case,” Lennart said. “Do you think I’m stupid?”

“Yes,” Mossa said. “Stupid enough to try to win their favor. You thought the cops would help you. I think you are stupid enough for that. I trusted you. We talked about your brother. I liked your brother, but I don’t like you.”

“Someone else must have squealed. Someone who played that night.”

He didn’t want to say what he thought, that Micke had told the police what he knew. But could he have known the names of the players? John might have told him, but it wasn’t likely. He kept quiet about such things.

“Stop giving me lies. You don’t believe it yourself,” Mossa said. “You turned me in. I couldn’t care less about the others, but no one runs to the cops with my name, you understand?”

Lennart nodded.

“I get it, I do, but it really wasn’t me. I want to do this on my own, you know that. That’s why I looked for you.”

“In order to have something to barter with.”

“You have a brother, Mossa. You love him, you should get it. I’m doing everything I can to find the guy who killed John.”

“Don’t mix Ali in this.”

“He is a brother. John was a brother.”

Mossa sat quietly and seemed to weigh his words.

“I think you are a shit,” he said finally and stood up, the gun still in his hand. “Put on a shirt. I don’t want to shoot a man with a bare chest.”

“Kill me then, you dumb bastard. Do you think I give a fuck?” Lennart said belligerently and looked at Mossa with defiance.

Mossa smiled.

“You really are stupid, aren’t you?”

“Did you kill John?”

The Iranian shook his head and raised the gun so it pointed at Lennart’s knees.

“It wasn’t me,” Lennart said with sweat running down his face.

In a way he felt relieved. He had experienced this sensation before, one night when his drinking had led to an episode of heart palpitations. That time he had been prepared to die, had made peace with his shitty existence. He had gotten up, drunk some water and looked at himself in the mirror, and then gone back to bed with his heart jumping around in his chest.

Mossa raised the gun a few centimeters.

“You remind me of an Armenian I once knew,” Mossa said. “He also met his death with courage.”

Lennart sank to his knees.

“Plant the bullet in my skull,” he said and closed his eyes.

Mossa lowered his gun, kicked Lennart in the mouth, and leaned over him.

“If you want to play the detective, then go talk to his whore for a wife,” he hissed and left the apartment. Lennart, who had fallen down when he was kicked, lay still on the floor until he started shivering with cold.

Twenty minutes later, Lennart had managed to take a warm shower and wrap himself up in a sheet. The kick had busted his lip and he had to tape it up to stop the bleeding. He jumped when the front doorbell rang. He had forgotten all about Lindell stopping by.

He opened the door, prepared for anything, until he saw the stroller.

“What the fuck?” he said and backed up into the apartment.

They sat down in the living room.

“What happened to you?”

“I slipped at work,” Lennart said. “The shovel caught me right here.”

“You don’t have any Band-Aids?”

“Tape works fine.”

All the air had gone out of him. The early morning, the work in the snow, Mossa’s unexpected visit, and the warm shower had so drained him that he could hardly keep his eyes open. If Lindell hadn’t been sitting there he would have fallen asleep in a minute.

“You said something about a lead,” Lindell said. “Why didn’t you say anything to Sammy Nilsson?”

“Like I said, I don’t care for him. He’s too cocky, comes on too strong.”

“You do too, sometimes,” Lindell said. “For your information.”

Lennart smiled. With his lip taped up it looked like a grimace.

“So now you’re the private eye, huh?”

“Not at all. But you did pique my interest.”

“Why are the cops not spending any time on trying to catch my brother’s killer?”

“I think you’re wrong. From what I understand, this case is top priority.”

“The fuck it is. You think he’s some poor shit who doesn’t matter. If he had been a VIP, things would look a lot different.”

“All murder cases are treated with the same seriousness,” Lindell said calmly. “You know that.”

“So what have you found out? He stopped by Micke’s apartment and then he disappeared. Have you checked Micke’s alibi?”

“I take it for granted.”

“You take for granted-I don’t take shit for granted. Do you know John gambled?”

Lindell nodded.

“Have you checked with his gambling buddies? They’re probably a pack of rats.”

“I’m not officially on this case, but clearly every part of John’s life will be carefully scrutinized.”

“That means you don’t have anything. What happened to the money anyway?”

“What money?” Lindell said, aware of the fact that he meant the poker winnings.

“He won at poker, didn’t you know that?”

Lindell shook her head.

“You don’t fool me,” Lennart said evenly. He was used to cops doing this, playing dumb, and he wondered how he could get her to spill what she knew.

Lindell smiled, got up, and went over to the stroller.

“And what about Berit, the hypocritical cow,” he said. “She doesn’t say shit to me, just talks to Mom and Justus. I’m the one she should be talking to, but no, she’s too fucking good for that. She’s the one sitting on the money.”

Lindell watched him clench his hands.

“I’m his brother and if anyone can sort this out it’s me, and damn if she isn’t keeping something from me.”

He looked up quickly and met Lindell’s gaze.

“But she’s the widow, probably cries all the time, and you treat her with kid gloves, isn’t that right?”

“I’m sure she’s been questioned just like anyone else,” Lindell said. “And even if you are John’s brother, Berit is the one who should be able to give us the most information about John’s movements during his last few days. Why would she need to keep something secret, as you were suggesting?”

“She’s always…,” Lennart began, then stopped. “You can’t trust broads.” Lindell had trouble determining if he was making a little joke or if there was some substance behind the half-articulated accusations against his sister-in-law.

“I’ll get it out of her, whatever it is,” he said, his teeth clenched. “I’m going to get the guy who killed my brother and if it takes her down too I couldn’t care less. She asked for it.”

Lindell sat down again.

“Who hit you?”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s blood on the kitchen floor,” Lindell said.

“I started bleeding again after I came home.”

“In the kitchen?”

“Is it against the law?”

His raised voice woke Erik, who started whimpering in the stroller. Lindell walked over and reassured him, rocking the stroller.

“I think you had a visitor,” she said after the whimpering stopped.

“So what?”

“If you want to help us catch your brother’s killer you’d better play with open cards.”

“You’re just like Sammy Nilsson,” Lennart said and got to his feet. The sheet trailed on the floor as he walked into the bedroom.

Lindell heard him moving around and assumed he was putting clothes on. She saw that she was right when he came back wearing pants and a T-shirt. The piece of tape on his lip had come off.

“You should have someone look that over,” she said. “I think you need stitches.”

“I thought you had left already.”

Lennart watched her cross the street with the stroller, aiming for the bus stop.

“Fucking bitch,” he mumbled.

It was only now that Mossa’s final comment fully penetrated his mind. Mossa had used the word whore, and that was a strong statement coming from him. He was a tough guy but one who chose his words with care. If he used the word whore he meant it, not like how some guys just tossed it out when they were talking about women. Everyone who knew Mossa knew that he was respectful of women, that he worshipped his mother, and that he was always conscientious about sending his greetings to his friends’ sisters and wives.

He had called Berit a whore. That could only mean one thing: she had been unfaithful. “Talk to his whore for a wife,” he had said. The meaning of the words hit Lennart with an almost physical violence. Had she really had someone else?

His tiredness was gone. He put on socks, boots, and outerwear, and was out on the street within minutes. The route he chose was identical to the one he had walked the night he found out that John had died. Instead of tears this time, he was filled with anger and unanswered questions throbbing in his head as he half ran, half walked.

The snow was as deep as it had been that night. There was no snowplow on Brantings square but instead a group of drunk youngsters singing Christmas carols. He stopped and watched them. He had also been here, making noise in the same way, thrown out of the Brantings community center and a drug-free Christmas party, drunk out of his mind on beer, fourteen years old and already an outsider, literally and figuratively, something that still ached in his body, a mixture of shame and hate. God, how he had hated, breaking a window of the public library and throwing bicycles around. The police had arrested him and Albin had had to pay for the damages.

He walked over to the youngsters.

“Anyone have a cell phone?”

They stared at him.

“I need to make a call.”

“Get your own, mister.”

“I need one now.”

“There’s a pay phone over there.”

Lennart grabbed one of the boys.

“Give me a phone or I swear I’ll fucking smash your head in,” he hissed at the terror-stricken boy.

“You can borrow mine,” said a girl and stretched it out to him.

“Thanks,” Lennart said and dropped the boy. “Two minutes,” he said and walked off to the side.

He called Micke, who had just fallen asleep on the sofa and answered incoherently. They talked for a few minutes. Lennart threw the cell phone into the snow and took off half running over Skomakarberget.

Berit had just turned off the TV. For some reason she had become more interested in the news since John’s death. Even Justus joined her in front of the television. Maybe it was to measure their misfortune against everything else happening in the world, to feel that they weren’t alone. Quite the opposite, as it turned out, violence was doubled and reprised many times over on the TV screen.

She threw the remote control onto the table and put her hand on Justus’s shoulder. He was about to get up, but she wanted him to stay on the couch with her a little while longer. He turned his head and looked at her.

“Sit a little longer,” she said, and to her surprise he sank back.

“What’s a Traveler?” he asked.

“The Travelers? Well,” Berit said. “Well, what to say? They were a kind of people who weren’t gypsies but not Swedish either. Dark. There were big Traveler families, or clans. Your father used to talk about them. ‘They’re Travelers,’ he might say about people. He said that explained a lot about a person. Why do you ask?”

“A kid I met outside said that.”

“About who?”

“About Dad,” Justus said and looked at her with that mercilessly direct gaze that would take no half-truths or evasions. “He said Dad was a Traveler.”

“That’s not true,” Berit said. “You know that. Your father was light-haired.”

“But Lennart is dark.”

“Justus, it’s just something kids say. There are no Travelers anymore. Was he mean to you? Who was it?”

“Patrik,” Justus said. “But he’s screwed up. His dad beats his new wife.”

“What are you saying?”

“Everyone knows about it.”

She thought about his words. Of course he would be likely to hear a thing or two, but she wasn’t worried. He was used to standing up for himself. Justus could look delicate but it was a mistake to think he was soft all the way through. Inside, he was as hard as flint, just like John.

She sniffled involuntarily at the thought of John. Justus stared straight ahead but put his hand in her lap.

“Dad wanted us to move,” he said. “I did too.”

“Where would we move to? When did he say this?”

“During the fall. He wanted us to move far away.”

“He had his dreams, you know that. But I think he was happy here.”

“He said he wanted to get away from this shit hole.”

“He did?” Berit stared at him in amazement. “He used those words?”

Justus nodded and stood up.

“Where are you going?”

“I have to feed the fish.”

Berit watched him from the sofa. He moved like John, making the same hand movement over the surface of the water. The cichlids swam up to him in sweeping groups, beautifully synchronized so that they looked like one big body.

Then someone thumped on the door. The person didn’t bother with the doorbell, just kept thumping. Justus dropped the can of fish food and stared into the hall. Berit got up but felt as if her shaky legs were not going to carry her. She looked over toward the clock on the sideboard.

“Do you want me to get it?” Justus asked.

“No, I’ll go see who it is,” she said and walked to the front door.

The thumping had stopped. She put the chain on the door and opened it. Lennart was standing outside.

“Why are you banging on the door?”

She thought about not letting him in, but he would make such a racket in the stairwell that it was just as well to let him in. He came in like a shot.

“Have you been drinking?”

“Don’t start that with me, you bitch. I’ve never been more sober in my life. Bitch!”

“Go away!” Berit said curtly and opened the door again, holding it wide open and boring her eyes into Lennart’s.

“Take it easy. I’ll leave when I’m good and ready. There’s something you need to tell me.”

“Justus, go to your room,” Berit said with a shrill voice. She placed herself between her son and her brother-in-law.

“Just leave,” she hissed. “To think you have the nerve to come here with your dirty mouth.”

“I’ve talked to Mossa and Micke,” Lennart said calmly.

Berit threw a quick look over her shoulder. Justus was still there, frozen in place. There was something reminiscent of John in him.

“Go away. Please. We can talk later.”

“There’s not going to be a later,” Lennart said.

A quiet power struggle was going on between them. If only he had been drunk, she thought, it would have been easier. But Lennart looked unusually clearheaded. His cheeks were ruddy and there was no lingering smell of alcohol or sweat on him.

“What happened to your lip?”

“None of your business. We’re not here to talk about my lips,” he chuckled, pleased with his improvised joke.

Berit lowered her head and drew a deep breath.

“Lennart, for heaven’s sake, think of Justus. He has lost his father. He doesn’t need this now. It’s enough, we…”

She sobbed once.

“This is a fine time to cry. You should have thought of it before.”

Berit went over to Justus, put a hand on his shoulder, and looked him in the face.

“Justus, please go to your room. He’s either drunk or crazy. He’s talking bullshit. I don’t want you to have to hear this.”

“I live here too,” Justus said, without looking up.

“Of course you do,” Berit said. “But why don’t you let us alone for a minute.”

“What is he talking about?”

“I don’t know,” she said in a low voice.

“The hell you don’t!” Lennart shouted from the door. “Justus needs to hear a little about his mother. You go putting on some act like you’re the grieving widow and crying and shit. Who says you weren’t behind it?”

“That’s far enough. Even if you’ve gone stark raving mad, then think of your nephew. Justus, go to your room. I’ll take care of this.”

“I don’t want to,” Justus said.

“We’ll talk about this later. Go to your room and close the door,” Berit said in a firm voice and more or less forced him into his bedroom. Then she turned to Lennart.

“Who sent you here with this disgusting babble?”

“Dick, do you remember him? Sure you do, you probably remember his teeth.”

“Stop it!”

The anger made her voice rise an octave.

“Shut the door!” she shouted at Justus.

“You can’t scare me by screaming. There are people who say you had something to do with John’s death.”

She stared at him.

“Fucking idiot,” she hissed. “You goddamned fucking idiot.”

“Shove it up your ass.”

“First you tell me who is spreading these lies about me.”

“They aren’t lies. Micke told me.”

“Micke Andersson? I thought you knew me. And John,” she said.

“In the stillest waters,” he said, and she slapped him in the face.

“It’s time for you to go now.”

“Look here, bitch,” he said and grabbed her arm as Justus burst out of his room.

“Stop fighting!” he shouted. “Stop!”

Berit embraced her son but he freed himself. Anger convulsed his face, he sniffed and stared helplessly at her.

“Justus, don’t listen to him.”

“Suit yourself,” Lennart said derisively. “Mossa called you a whore and that’s a good name for you, the way you carried on with that neighbor of yours.”

“You mean Stellan? He’s gay! He hugs everyone. You know that, Justus. That’s just Stellan.”

“And what about Dick Lindström. You’ve been with him too, haven’t you? Did you like the way he bit you?”

“You are not in your right mind,” Berit said calmly. “You are a sick man living in a sick world.”

“Who’s Dick?” Justus asked.

“He’s a friend of John, someone Berit has been getting it on with. Going behind John’s back with.”

“He came on to me once, tried to feel me up, but I fought him off. You were here, for God’s sake. I was cooking in the kitchen, while the rest of you sat in here playing cards. I didn’t want to say anything because John would have tried to kill him.”

“So that’s your story now, is it?”

“There’s never been a different story. He tried to feel me up, he was disgusting. Do you really think I would…”

Berit didn’t finish the sentence.

“Don’t believe a word he says,” she told Justus. “He’s sick.”

“Don’t say stuff like that,” Lennart said.

Justus looked at the two of them with a blank expression, then walked into his room and slammed the door.

“Are you happy now, you bastard?” Berit said. “He has enough on his mind without you coming here with your shit. Go now, before I kill you. And don’t you ever come here again, or I’m calling the cops.”

“If anyone should call it would be me,” Lennart said. “Did John know about this? Is that why he died? If it is, you’re going to be dead soon.”

Berit stared at him.

“You shithead! God, how I hate you. Running around, drinking all the time. John tried to get out and he succeeded, but you still run around like the disgusting wino you are. And you have the nerve to come here and threaten me, you damn scumbag. It’s like John said, you never grew up. He despised you, do you know that? He hated all your talk about Ymergatan and pool halls. That was all a hundred years ago. Is it anything to talk about? Pathetic small-time gangsters who terrorized the block. Go drown yourself, pisshead. You think you were really something then, like kings, but purse snatching and thinner sniffing only kills your brain. John had the guts to leave all that behind, but you’re still crawling around in the shit. Do you know that John hated all your loose talk but he put up with it because he was your brother-otherwise he would have thrown you out a long time ago.”

Berit stopped abruptly, chest heaving. Lennart was smiling tauntingly at her, but she could see fear in his eyes, and for a moment she felt a twinge of guilt. His smile stiffened into a grimace, a macabre mask, behind which a desperate anguish became more and more apparent. He drew back, out of the apartment and into the stairwell, still with lifted head but then the twitch came, the one Berit knew so well. He drew air in through his nose, bent over and sobbed. It was as if her dagger had only now reached his heart. His eyes grew dim and restless, he turned and charged down the stairs with thundering steps.

She heard the door downstairs shut. As if in a fog she shut her own door and sank to the floor. The only noise was the sound of the aquarium pump. There was only silence from Justus’s room. Berit looked up. It was as if the boy’s anxieties and questions pulsated through the closed door. She should go in and talk to him, but couldn’t summon the strength. Her body no longer obeyed her. Lennart’s talk and her attack had drained her completely. She had held herself together for so long, spent so much time talking to Justus. They had watched TV in the evenings, ostensibly watched, that is, but really talking. Berit had reminisced about times in her and John’s life, tried to create images that Justus would be able to treasure. She had told him about John’s youth, leaving out the worst, talked about how skillful and admired he had been at work, his knowledge of cichlids and how much he loved his son. She knew that the dead walked alongside the living. Now the myth of John was born, the image of a man who put his family first, whose goal in life had been to create a secure childhood for Justus.

The night before, she had told Justus that John had opened a bank account when Justus was born and that every month, no matter how hard up they were, he deposited 150 kronor. She had shown him the latest deposit and he had sat with the slip of paper in his hand for a long time.

Now Lennart was threatening to tear this all down, and this double pain knocked her to the ground. How long would she be able to carry on? Her work as a disability attendant did not provide her with enough income, and the possibilities of going to full-time were slim. She had no education, no contacts. Of course she would receive something after John, she didn’t know how much yet, but it would be hard. She wanted to spare her son the worst of it, especially now.

She got up with a great effort and stopped outside Justus’s door. It was completely quiet in there. She knocked and opened the door. He was sitting on the bed and took no notice of her when she came in.

“You don’t believe him, do you? He’s full of lies.”

Justus stared down into the bed.

“He’s confused, Justus. He’s heard some rumors and he’s looking for someone to blame. Do you understand?”

He nodded.

“As if we don’t have enough to deal with,” she said with a sigh and sat down at his desk. “I have never been unfaithful or as much as looked at another man. Your father was enough for me, do you understand? We had a good relationship. People are surprised that we stuck together for so many years, but for John and me there was nobody else.”

“But there was something,” Justus said and gave her a hasty look.

“No, nothing,” she said. “Absolutely nothing.”

“Then why did Lennart say that stuff?”

Again she tried to explain to him that Lennart was living in another world, one in which there was nothing other than John’s death.

“You and I can talk about him, remember him together, and we have each other. Lennart has nothing.”

“Daddy liked Lennart,” Justus said very quietly. “Why did you say those things to him?”

He didn’t say anything else, but in his eyes she saw something she had never seen before. Grief and hate, which aged his face, as if the hate didn’t have enough place in his youthfulness. She damned her brother-in-law. She stood up, wanted to say something else, but sighed and left him, walking out into the hall. She heard him close the door behind her.

His words about John having wanted to move worried her. They had talked about it before, but never seriously. They had both been born in Uppsala, and for her part she couldn’t see herself living anywhere else. Shit hole, he had said to Justus.

She felt let down by the fact that he had talked to Justus-not to her, just the boy. What else had they talked about that she didn’t know about?

Ann Lindell looked at the building in front of her. The yellow brick house reminded her of something, probably a building involved in a case from the past. Now she was out on her own, which felt strange. Normally she would have been here as part of a team, with a defined strategy and a definite goal. And although she had had to improvise somewhat before, she now had to question her every step. It was a feeling of freedom mixed with a bad conscience.

She had called Information and received Berit Jonsson’s phone number and address. She lived in one of these brightly lit apartments. She took out her cell phone, put it back, and then looked up at the building again. She should call Haver, but it was late and perhaps this impulse was ill-founded. If she had been working she wouldn’t have hesitated for a second, but now she would be obliged to explain to Haver why she was out on her own. She sighed heavily, dialed his number, and after a few more seconds of hesitation pressed the Talk button. Rebecka Haver answered after the first ring. Lindell heard in the way she answered that she expected it to be her husband.

“May I speak to Ola Haver?” Lindell asked without introducing herself.

There was a second’s pause on the other end before Rebecka answered.

“He’s at work,” she said.

Silence.

“Who is this?”

“Thank you, I’ll call back,” Lindell said and hung up. You idiot, she thought to herself. They must have caller ID.

She was overcome with shame and she cursed her clumsiness. He was at work. She could reach him there but now it felt as if it would simply compound her mistake.

The phone rang and Berit lifted the receiver as if she was expecting news of another death. But the caller was a woman she had read about in the paper and heard John talk about: Ann Lindell, with the police. What surprised Berit was that she sounded so tired, and that even though it was late she wanted to come by and have a few words with her.

Ann Lindell came in a few minutes later. She was carrying a little baby in her arms.

“This is Erik,” she said.

“You bring your children to work with you?”

“I’m not officially on duty right now,” Lindell said. “But I’m still helping out a little.”

“Helping out a little,” Berit repeated. “And there’s no one else to look after the baby?”

“I’m a single mom,” Lindell said and carefully laid Erik on the sofa. He had woken up as soon as they entered Berit’s building but fallen asleep again when she took him out of the stroller and carried him up the stairs in her arms. Berit turned off one of the lamps so that it wouldn’t shine in his eyes. The two women quietly watched the sleeping baby for a while.

“What do you want?”

There was a note of impatience in her voice, as well as something that Lindell judged to be fear.

“I’m genuinely sorry for what has happened,” Lindell said. “John was a good man.” She unconsciously used Ottosson’s words.

“Yes,” Berit said.

“I think he was murdered for money, and I think you’re sitting on that money right now.”

“Me, sitting on the money?”

Berit shook her head. There were too many questions, impressions. First Lennart, then Justus, and now this off-duty officer.

“It means you may be in danger,” Lindell said.

Berit looked at her and tried to understand the full implication of her words.

“Quite honestly I don’t care about the money,” Lindell said. “It was John’s and now it’s yours, but a lot of money always brings risk with it.”

It was a stab in the dark from Lindell’s side. She didn’t know for sure if the motive was money or if Berit knew where it was. She wasn’t able to judge Berit’s expression to determine if she had known about John’s poker winnings or not.

“If we assume he won all this money, did he have some friend that he would tell?”

“No,” Berit said immediately. She thought about Micke, and Lennart’s words came back to her.

“What about Micke?” Lindell said, as if she had been reading her thoughts.

“What do you want?” Berit asked. “It’s late, you have a baby with you, you ask a lot of questions but you’re not on duty. Who do you think you are?”

Lindell shook her head and glanced at Erik, who was sleeping peacefully.

“I just had an idea,” she said. “I was talking with a colleague of mine today and I had the idea to…well, I don’t know exactly.”

She looked at Berit. She had heard her described as beautiful and Lindell could see her beauty, though most of it was gone. The fatigue, grief, and tension had carved into her skin like knives, and her carriage bore witness to enormous emotional and physical exhaustion.

“How is your son?” Lindell asked.

Berit heaved a sob. She stood in front of Lindell with no pretense, looked her in the eyes, and cried. Lindell had seen a great deal, but Berit expressed the deepest despair she had ever seen. Perhaps it was the quiet way in which she was crying that amplified it? A scream of pain, grief, and a collapsed life would have been easier to take, but Berit’s steady gaze and quiet tears touched Lindell deeply. Erik shifted uneasily and Lindell felt close to tears herself.

“I think I should go,” she said and rubbed her cheek. “It was silly of me to come here. I just had a strange feeling, almost a physical compunction to come by.”

Berit nodded. Lindell picked up the baby.

“You can stay longer if you want,” Berit said.

“I can’t,” Lindell said.

Erik’s warmth and his tiny movements inside the snowsuit made her determined to leave Berit and the whole case behind. It wasn’t her investigation. She was on maternity leave and in a few days her parents would be coming up from Ödeshög.

“Yes, you can,” Berit said, and Lindell marveled at her metamorphosis. “I don’t know what made you come here, but whatever it was it must have been important.”

“I don’t know,” Lindell said. “It was pretty dumb and unprofessional, actually.”

Berit made a gesture as if to say it didn’t matter, unprofessional or not, she was here now.

“I’ll stay a little longer if I can have something to drink. I’m so thirsty.”

While Berit went to get a bottle of Christmas mead, Lindell laid Erik down again, unzipping his snowsuit and pushing his pacifier back in. He slept. She turned to the aquarium. It was certainly enormous. She followed the movement of the fish with fascination.

“They have their own territories,” Berit said when she came back. “John was so proud of that. He had created an African lake in miniature.”

“Did he ever visit Africa?”

“No, how would we have been able to afford that? We dreamed of it, or rather, John was in charge of the dream department; I made sure everything kept working.”

Berit looked away from the fish tank.

“He got to dream,” she said, “and he pulled Justus with him. Do you know how it is to be poor?” she asked and looked at Lindell. “It’s living on the margins, but still wanting to enjoy things. We spent everything on Justus. We wanted him to have nice clothes. John bought a computer this fall. Sometimes we bought good food for a special occasion. You can’t feel poor all the time.”

The words fell like gray stones from her mouth. There was no pride in her voice, simply a factual statement that the Jonsson family had tried to create a sphere where they felt real, part of something bigger and more attractive.

“We sometimes played with the idea that we were rich, not outrageously rich, but that we would be able to fly somewhere sometimes, take a plane and see something new. I would like to go to Portugal. I don’t know why Portugal exactly, but a long time ago I heard some music from there and it expressed what I felt inside.”

She looked around the room as if to size up what she and John had built up over the years. Lindell followed her gaze.

“I think your home is nice,” she said.

“Thanks,” Berit said flatly.

Lindell stepped out into the wintry landscape an hour later, that familiar sense of weakness in her body. The only sounds were from cars driving by on Vaksalagatan and the hum of a streetlamp. People were inside their homes, boiling hams and wrapping presents. She thought about calling Haver but realized it was too late now. How would he take the fact that she had just blundered into his investigation? What would his wife say about the fact that she had called?

She decided to wait until tomorrow before contacting Haver. Deep inside her mind she was harboring a thought that maybe they could see each other. They had hardly twenty-four hours before her parents came into town. See each other, she snorted. It’s his embrace you want. If all you want to do is see him you can walk into his office whenever you want. No, you want him in your home, at the kitchen table as a very intimate friend, one who could give you a hug and maybe a kiss. That’s how deprived you are of human closeness.

She wasn’t looking forward to her parents’ visit. In fact, she feared it. Right now she couldn’t handle her mother’s attentions. Her dad would sit quietly in front of the TV, and that was fine, but her mother’s well-intentioned expressions of concern about Ann’s future would drive her insane. And this time she wouldn’t be able to get away, not like her increasingly rare visits to her childhood home.

On top of it all, her mother had started to talk about moving to Uppsala. The house in Ödeshög was becoming too much for them, she said. The ideal scenario according to her mother would be a little apartment close to Ann and Erik.

Had talking to Lennart and Berit been the right thing to do? Lindell stopped in the snow. She didn’t know if it was to rest her arms-it was hard work pushing the stroller over the unplowed sidewalk-or because she was struck by the unprofessional nature of her actions, but it didn’t matter which. She simply stood there. Snow fell all around her in generous, beautiful, and somehow reassuring proportions.

“I’m certainly not sophisticated,” she said quietly to herself. “Not like detectives on TV, the ones who listen to opera, know Greek mythology, and know if a wine is right for fish or a white meat. I just am. A normal gal who happened to become a police officer, the way other people become chefs, gardeners, or bus drivers. I want there to be justice, and I want it so much I forget to live my life.”

None of my colleagues are sophisticated either, she thought. Some of them don’t even know what that word means. They just work. What do they talk about? Definitely not about different years of wines from a fantastic vineyard in some unknown part of the world. At most they compare box wines from the state liquor store.

Sammy Nilsson had subscribed for many years to Illustrated Science magazine and regularly-with childish enthusiasm-volunteered small anecdotes from new developments in astronomy, or medical research, delivering these pop-science facts with the authority of a Nobel Prize winner. Fredriksson would fill in with wonderful facts such as the one that the mountain egret spends the winter in Alunda, or explain why wolves don’t cross railway tracks. This is our version of educated culture, she thought.

Ottosson often appeared absentminded and a little lost. Most likely he would have preferred to be out at his cabin, chopping wood and working in his vegetable garden. Berglund was a reassuring uncle, with a large store of knowledge about the human race and the ability to win people’s trust.

Fredriksson was the nature lover who found it hard to keep up with the increasing tempo and the stress of everyday life. He could also offer up evidence of hostility to foreigners, not in conscious harangues about the superiority of the white race-nothing like that-more like an expression of confusion about the state of things, uncomprehending in the face of the rootless kids with immigrant backgrounds that figured more and more often in their cases. Sammy could become furious when Fredriksson made some sweeping generalization, short arguments that always ended with Fredriksson saying, “That wasn’t what I meant, you know that.”

That’s why we’re good, Lindell thought and pushed the stroller a few more meters. If we were cultured in that lofty way, our jobs would suffer. Maybe that kind of police officer existed in other districts, but in Uppsala, the seat of higher learning, the police were regular people.

Sammy could understand teenagers, not because he was deep-most of the time he wasn’t even particularly methodical or sharp-witted-but because he represented something the kids on the street had been looking for. No flakiness, no meaningless social chatter, just the real thing. They could have used him, and a dozen others like him, full-time on the beat in Gottsunda, Uppsala’s most populated suburb, where the powers that be had taken the inspired step of shutting down the local police branch. “I guess it’s a natural development to increase police visibility by turning us out onto the street,” one colleague had commented at the morning meeting. If only they could place Sammy there, all the vandalism, graffiti, theft, fear, and threats to personal security would fall off drastically.

Lindell smiled. She knew that this self-satisfied argumentation was motivated by a desire to justify her current independent police venture. She tried to convince herself that her colleagues would have done the same thing in her stead.

But of course that wasn’t true. Her independent investigating was not consistent with good ethics. Ottosson would be deeply concerned about her actions and most of her colleagues would shake their heads. But what should she have done? Lennart wanted to talk to her, and her alone, and wasn’t it therefore her duty as a citizen to talk to him? And once she had talked to Lennart, what was the difference in talking with Berit?

Lindell didn’t know what she thought about Berit. It was possible that she was concealing something behind the surprised expression in her beautiful but harrowed face. Information she would keep from the police, however intimate the girl talk became. Her priority was to protect her son, then John’s memory, two sides of the same coin. Did she know where John had stashed the poker winnings? Had she had an affair with another man? Was there jealousy as well as money at the root of the murderer’s motive? Lindell had trouble imagining Berit cooperating in the murder, or even that a rejected lover lay behind the murder. Lindell believed in Berit’s fidelity. She wanted to believe in it and she toyed with the idea that they would have occasion to chat again in the future. Berit seemed wise, had a direct way of talking and probably also a good sense of humor.

Lindell folded up the stroller and lifted it into the trunk of the car. Erik woke up when she strapped him into the car seat. He looked at her with his big eyes, and she stroked him gently on the cheek.