But everyone on the whiteboard, except Brant, was a native and stemmed from the other, for the most part vanished, Uppsala.
They were all acquainted with the murdered man. One of the two women, Gunilla, had been married to him, and the other, Ingegerd, had a relationship with him until quite recently.
One of them, Göran Bergman, had worked with Gränsberg. The others had been drinking with him, except for Bernt Friberg, who lived with Gunilla Lange. None of those questioned had any idea what connection Brant had with Gränsberg, but his work as a journalist was the only reasonable explanation.
There were ten names in all. One of them perhaps was the murderer. Purely instinctively they ruled out Göran Bergman, whose grief seemed to be genuine. Nine remained.
Which of them could conceivably have a motive? All of them, the three investigators decided.
Berglund thought it was a drinking thing.
“There was a spat in Gränsberg’s trailer that went downhill,” he thought. “It started as an argument about something trivial, then out came an iron pipe and suddenly one of the combatants was lying there.”
Beatrice believed it might be Bernt Friberg and the motive would be jealousy.
“He was opposed to Gunilla’s loan of a hundred thousand to her ex-husband,” Beatrice asserted. “She told me she hadn’t talked about her plans, but that Friberg found out by accident and then went completely nuts.”
“Did it come to fisticuffs?” Berglund asked, and Sammy Nilsson smiled at his word choice.
“Not that I know, but Friberg seems to be a hot-tempered type, who easily boils over,” said Beatrice. “When I questioned him he sat with his fists clenched the whole time, his face was bright red and when I brought up the subject of Gränsberg and his good relationship with Gunilla, Friberg spit out his words. He was really furious, even though he ought to be a little calmer with Gränsberg out of the game.”
“He didn’t even try to keep a straight face?” Sammy Nilsson asked. “Now he could sit there and pretend to grieve and talk nicely.”
Beatrice shook her head.
“I believe in Brant,” said Sammy Nilsson, “and that is for a single reason: He was demonstrably there.”
“It’s not established,” Beatrice objected.
“The gravel that was in the tire on his Toyota comes from the road up to the trailer, I’m dead sure of that. We have his prints there, and then he leaves.”
“The trip was planned before the murder,” said Berglund. “It was booked a few days before.”
“Perhaps the murder was planned,” said Sammy Nilsson.
“Why?”
“That’s our job to figure out,” said Sammy Nilsson and smiled.
“The brothers in misfortune, then, as you call them,” said Beatrice, turning to Berglund. “Do you have any favorites?”
Berglund shook his head. Beatrice had hoped he would come out with a name, because they all had great respect for the older officer’s intuition. He had hit it right many times, above all in the cases where the victim’s and murderer’s background was like his, that is, what he always summarized as “east of the Fyris River.”
“Brant and Gränsberg are the same age,” Sammy Nilsson said suddenly. “Can that be something?”
Berglund understood immediately what he meant.
“You mean they were in school together?”
“I’ll check on that,” said Sammy Nilsson.
Beatrice continued the brainstorming. “If we don’t believe it’s a drinking thing or jealousy, what motive is there? What can Gränsberg know or have that is so valuable that it motivates violence? He was not a rich man, owned no property, and actually had nothing anyone else could conceivably be after.”
“An old grudge, perhaps?” Sammy Nilsson tossed out. “Something that happened many years ago. Maybe Gränsberg cheated the murderer out of money, didn’t pay back a loan, or whatever.”
“And now the rumor got out that Gränsberg was going to invest a lot of dough to start up a company with Bergman,” said Berglund, picking up the thread. “Then the murderer saw his chance to collect the old debt. Gränsberg obviously refused and the result was a few blows to the head.”
“We’ll have to question Bergman and Gunilla Lange again,” said Beatrice. “Maybe they have some idea.”
“What about the alibis for his buddies?” Beatrice asked.
“Tolerable,” said Berglund, consulting his notes, which was a change from before.
Since Berglund’s operation, when a tumor was removed from his brain, his memory had gotten worse, that was apparent to everyone at Homicide. Before, he could reel off names and connections like running water. On the other hand this might be a completely normal sign of age. Berglund only had a few months left until retirement.
“Manfred Kvist we can probably count out completely,” said Berglund. “In the morning he actually had a foot care appointment, he showed me his feet, and if there’s someone who needs foot care it’s dear Manfred. From there he went straight to the Mill and met some buddies. They had a little aquavit, Manfred was going to arrange something to go with it and went into Torgkassen. When he came up to the register he didn’t have enough money and there was a little kerfuffle. That’s confirmed by two employees. Then he and his buddies went out on the square to have lunch, that is, a seventy-centiliter bottle of aquavit and a lukewarm hot dog. A guy who sells flowers at the square thought they were yelling too much and told them so. He knows Manfred from before and was quite certain he was part of that merry troupe. Mustafa, or whoever it was, had been to buy flowers that morning and was quite sure it was on Monday.”
Berglund read from his notes and started up again.
“In the afternoon he was at ‘The Grotto,’ that’s quite clear and then-”
“We can probably remove him, in other words,” said Sammy Nilsson. “The others?”
“Two of them, Johnny Andersson and one Molle Franzén, you surely recognize them,” said Berglund, looking up, but both Beatrice and Sammy shook their heads. “They’re a little unclear about what they were doing on Tuesday. Both had been drinking pretty heavily the whole weekend and probably on Monday as well and don’t remember too much.
“Johnny maintains in any event that he visited his aged mother at a home for the elderly in Svartbäcken, he does that every Monday afternoon, but when I spoke with her she remembers even less than her son. She’s obviously senile. A woman on the staff claims to maybe remember Johnny, but she also said that she may have been mistaken about the day, it might have been Tuesday.”
“I saw Johnny Andersson at Ingegerd Melander’s, it seems like he’s taken her over after Gränsberg,” Beatrice interjected.
“We actually do have one thing on him,” said Berglund. “A break-in and assault three years ago. He got one year, tried to escape, and got an extended sentence.”
“What was that about?” Sammy Nilsson asked.
“The usual, he and a buddy broke into a car repair shop, took a little money and some tools. Then they didn’t agree on how they should divide the spoils and Johnny knocked his buddy down.”
“Cozy,” said Sammy Nilsson.
“And then Molle Franzén,” Berglund resumed. “He says he was at ‘The Grotto’ although no one there remembers him. But most of these guys have a tendency to get the days mixed up. And why shouldn’t they?”
“Camilla, the manager,” asked Beatrice. “Doesn’t she remember?”
“Same thing for her, the guys come and go. If it’s not something special, it’s impossible for her to keep track of who is there on a particular day.”
“Are there more?” asked Sammy.
“Victor Skam, who is known as Victor the Looker, because he’s so monstrously ugly, barely remembers that he’s ugly, much less what he did last Monday. He seems weak, to say the least, it’s a question of whether he would have the strength to kill anyone.”