“Go over that again,” said Hällström. “Kumlin’s wife maintains that it was a Russian, but has nothing to back that up?”
“No,” said Beatrice Andersson. “She explains it by her husband’s business deals in Russia, that he might have felt threatened.”
“Was there an explicit threat?”
“Not that she knew of.”
“Strange,” said Hällström.
But Beatrice Andersson did not think so at all. She had listened to Henrietta Kumlin’s story, about the constant trips to Moscow and some place farther east, the name of which she could not remember, and about Jeremias’s worry, which had increased recently. And then this Oleg Fedotov, who to Henrietta was clearly the image of evil incarnate.
“His business seems to have moved in the well-known gray zone,” Beatrice continued. “There are, as we know, less conventional methods for getting your way.”
“Even murder?”
“Yes, that had occurred to Henrietta.”
Hällström nodded.
“But she knows this Fedotov?”
“They’ve met, but he was not the one watching their house. According to her, Fedotov prefers not to travel abroad. On the other hand his sons have visited Sweden and Uppsala, even stayed with the Kumlins.”
“But we don’t know if it was the fence man who murdered Kumlin,” Sammy interjected. “He evidently went up in smoke at eight thirty. Either he left the area or else he went into the garage, waited there all night, and went to work in the morning when Kumlin was going to take his car and drive to Arlanda. That could mean he knew that Kumlin would be leaving the house in the morning.”
“He didn’t leave a trace,” Beatrice Andersson observed in the antiphony that arose between her and Sammy Nilsson.
“A pro,” said Hällström, and Beatrice gave him a tired look that showed what she thought about that comment.
“Then we have Luthander’s information that there have been several unexpected visitors on the street recently,” Sammy resumed. “On two occasions he saw what he characterized as a stranger on the street. If that person was on his way to Kumlin we don’t know, no one else on the street noticed the man, and no one has expected or received a visit either. If we rely on Luthander’s information that this wasn’t the ‘Russian,’ if we’re calling him that, then who was he?”
“It may be someone who tried to visit someone on the street two times, but this someone was not at home,” said Beatrice Andersson.
“Someone doing reconnaissance,” Fredriksson tossed out.
“What bothers me, seriously,” Beatrice resumed, “is that the ‘Russian’ hangs around so long, completely visible. We have three witnesses, besides your buddy Luthander, who saw him standing there by the fence. Why? If the idea was to kill Kumlin that was unusually stupid.”
“It went wrong,” said Sammy. “The mission was to frighten, then it went overboard.”
“Did he stay in the garage the whole night?” Hällström asked. “I have a hard time believing that.”
For an hour they argued back and forth, until they started repeating themselves. It was the prosecutor who proposed a break, and it was as if that suggestion let the air out of the gathering.
The group broke up, but Sammy Nilsson stayed behind. He could not settle down. He was thinking about the Gränsberg-Brant-Kumlin connection. It had barely been discussed but it was arguably the most interesting.
If they could establish and understand such a connection, everything would be resolved, that was his firm conviction.
He left the meeting room and went to his own office, where he sank down in his chair and put his feet up on the desk. He ought to go home, but was unable to relax. He took out the photo that he had taken from Brant’s apartment and studied the team members.
Brant, the joker in the deck, Lindell’s lover, the Spanish traveler Brant, whom Ola Haver had all the trouble in the world locating. Sammy Nilsson guessed that Haver was not making any great efforts, he probably had his hands full working things out on the home front. Probably he had just dutifully sent a few e-mails to the Spanish police with questions that were now floating around in the virtual world of cyberspace.
Why did Brant take off? Why do people leave the country anyway? To get away, to work, or simply to go on vacation. At the start of the investigation Sammy had been convinced that Brant was hiding; now he was no longer so sure, perhaps due to what Lindell had told him. Would she have dated a murderer?
Suddenly it occurred to him that among all the piles of papers on the journalist’s desk there was a folder marked Putin.
He looked at the clock-six thirty-reached for the phone and called Lindell at home, who answered after the first ring.
“Hello!”
There was suppressed tension in her voice.
“How’s it going?”
“Huh? Is that you, Sammy? With what?”
Lindell’s voice seemed to be coming on scratchy connections from the other side of the globe.
“Life. Have you talked with Ottosson?”
She had not. An e-mail from Brant had changed the picture, as she said, but did not want to tell what it was about. This irritated Sammy Nilsson, and he let her know it too.
“But he’s clean,” said Lindell. “In any event where Gränsberg is concerned, I mean.”
“Where is he?”
“Brazil, in a city. In the atlas… I looked it up. It’s called Bahia. Or Salvador actually.”
“The atlas,” said Sammy Nilsson, as if he found it unbelievable that people looked things up in something as old-fashioned as an atlas.
“He knew Gränsberg but has nothing to do with the murder. It was a different murder.”
“What do you mean, different?”
“In Salvador, of a homeless person,” said Lindell tiredly. “He witnessed it.”
“Unbelievable,” said Sammy Nilsson. “That sort of thing doesn’t happen. Would-”
“One moment!”
Sammy heard Lindell set down the receiver. In the background bizarrely loud sounds from a TV were heard and he understood that she was yelling at Erik. The volume was lowered somewhat and Lindell returned.
“What did you say?”
“Have you been drinking?”
“Well, I, no, no,” Lindell protested. “Erik is just a little-”
“Are you depressed?”
Lindell did not answer. He could picture her, even if he hadn’t seen her new apartment, which she claimed to feel so at home in, but it was not comfort and coziness that Sammy Nilsson associated with Ann Lindell at just that moment. He knew she’d been drinking, he recognized the signs, the slightly elevated pitch in her voice and the bad syntax.
“Ann, listen to me! I’m coming over, so we can talk.”
The only thing he heard was Erik singing along with a song that boomed from the TV.
“Ann, are you there?”
Was she crying?
“Sure, a while longer anyway, but it’s a little heavy right now,” she said at last.
“Is 4B your apartment number?”
She hummed in reply.
“No entry code?”
“Three-eight-three-eight,” said Ann Lindell. “My shoe size times two. I do have two feet.”
But not particularly steady ones, thought Sammy Nilsson.
“Don’t drink any more! I’ll be there in half an hour, maybe an hour, just have to swing by home. Put on some coffee. Sit down with Erik on the couch, talk with him.”