Lindell shook her head.
Allan Fredriksson had been generally passive during the questioning. He had seldom felt so strongly that this was Lindell’s case and that it was her business to break down Malmberg’s resistance.
Malmberg was taken to the jail, and his bandanna to Forensics. Everything was hanging on a red thread. If it could be established that the thread they found in the forest hut came from Malmberg’s bandanna, they had an indictment, otherwise not.
“Were we too quick?” Lindell asked self-critically.
Fredriksson did not think so.
“There was no alternative, everything else has been threshed over,” he said.
“The harvest of chance,” said Lindell.
Fredriksson nodded. He felt out of sorts and tired and mostly wanted to put his feet up on Lindell’s desk, lean back, and close his eyes.
“Today Sammy is meeting the journalist coming back from Brazil,” he said, mostly to have something to say, perhaps to break Lindell’s tense expression, but the comment had the opposite effect. She looked like she’d been slapped.
“I know,” she hissed.
“Relax,” said Fredriksson. “You can’t do anything before Forensics has had their say. If the thread holds, that would be marvelous, otherwise we’ll have to try something else.”
“Something else,” Lindell muttered.
Forty-five
There was no doubt that Anders Brant was clearly the most interesting passenger on the flight from Madrid to Stockholm. His head was bandaged. He was also walking with a cane. The pain in his legs and hips, which had not bothered him much to start with, had gotten worse. The whole right side from the hip on down was basically one big bruise. Despite the doctor’s assurances that he would recover completely, he was worried about his future ability to move.
Even so, it gradually occurred to him what incredible luck he’d had. He ached all over and one ear was sewn on, but he was alive.
The Salvador-Madrid leg passed in a daze. Before departure he took two of the pain pills he got when he was discharged from the hospital and then had a cognac on the plane. The effect was quick and tangible. The flight attendant had to wake him when the plane landed. He had dreamed about Vanessa: turbulent confrontations, filled with shouting and tears, hatred and ill will.
Anders Brant staggered around the airport in Madrid, so captured by his dreamed experiences that he felt sick. He had presence of mind enough however to make his way to the right gate and sink down in an uncomfortable plastic chair. He was sweating profusely. His head ached and the pain in his hip was getting worse and worse as the pain reliever wore off.
This is my punishment, he repeated his mantra from his sickbed. That he would be punished was a given. He had not only betrayed Vanessa but also his own convictions. The experience with Monica in the shabby hotel room was a death blow to his whole outlook on life. He had deprived her of a piece of her human dignity, he was a whoremonger, a john.
The nausea made him lean back and swallow. He breathed in deeply, tried to focus on details in the terminal-a little crack in the dirty panorama windows, a vending machine with soft drinks, and scattered passengers walking past.
“Forgive me,” he mumbled, and hated himself even more for being such a sorry sight. How could she forgive him? Idiot, he thought.
He stood up but immediately sank back in the chair, dizzy and terrified that perhaps he would not be able to take care of himself. Would he even be able to write the articles on Brazil he had promised? Would he ever be able to write about…?
“Lay off,” he mumbled.
Would he be able to look Ann in the eyes and explain what had happened? Or would it be best if he gave her up too, without pathetic attempts at explanations?
I have to start over, he thought, and tried to logically construct a prelude to normalcy and everyday life, to the person he had been before. But soon he began to worry that he was in the wrong place, at the wrong gate, maybe even in the wrong terminal.
He stared at the information board above the gate, but Stockholm had not come up yet. There was less than two hours until departure. Maybe the gate had been changed? Helplessly he sat and stared stupidly ahead of him, remembering the man who had lived in an airport for years. That felt like an attractive alternative, floating, vegetating without purpose or goal, in a departure hall.
He closed his eyes, rocked his upper body a little back and forth in a hypnotic swaying, a trick he had used before to reset himself and try to regain control over his thoughts.
When he opened his eyes a short, skinny man was standing in front of him. His furrowed face expressed unveiled curiosity.
“I hardly recognized you,” said the man. “But isn’t it Anders?”
Anders Brant did not recognize him, but something in his voice sounded familiar, a harsh tone that made Brant think of the endless Sunday dinners of childhood.
“And who are you?”
The man grinned.
“You don’t recognize me?”
Brant took a deep breath.
“Did you get beat up?”
Anders Brant felt his anger growing.
“Maybe you’ve lost your memory?”
The man let out a dry laugh, looking around as if searching for an audience.
“Go to hell, you fucking nobody,” said Brant.
The man was startled.
“You curious little piece of shit,” Brant continued, and immediately started laughing.
It was not so much the man’s astonished face that made him burst out in uncontrolled laughter, but rather the liberating feeling of being able to say something in Swedish, and above all to tell someone off.
He got up from the chair, took his cane and shoulder bag with his computer, and limped away.
“You think you’re so fucking remarkable, huh?” the man shouted after him.
Without looking around Brant raised his cane.
“But all you write are lies!”
Brant stopped and looked over his shoulder. The man was gesturing and his mouth was moving, but Brant didn’t care about the words. It was as if he had left something behind on the spot he had left.
“Lies!” the man shouted again.
Brant nodded and went on. He needed a restroom.
“A pretty solid hit,” Sammy noted when Anders Brant told him about the accident. “Do you still have a headache?”
He had met the journalist in the arrival hall, introduced himself, and explained that the Uppsala police had a number of questions. If I get coffee right away, Anders Brant had said, and they sat down at a coffee bar.
Brant did not answer but instead stared without seeing at the people streaming past. He was actually not surprised to be met by the police, but felt too tired to answer questions, much less argue.
“A number of things have happened-”
“I know,” said Brant. “But I don’t get what this has to do with me.”
“Bosse Gränsberg,” said Sammy Nilsson. “You saw him the day before he was murdered, and I think you know why he was murdered.”
“What does Ann say?”
“About what?”
Brant shook his head.
“I met Bosse to interview him, that’s all,” said Brant.
He told how he and Bo Gränsberg ran into each other by chance and exchanged a few words about old times, bandy and so on, but pretty soon got on to the homeless situation in Uppsala.
“I’m writing a book about the homeless in several countries, and Bosse was simply an informant.”
“Do you see any motive for the murder? Did Gränsberg say anything about feeling threatened?”
“No, the only thing I can imagine is the ‘Russian papers,’ as Bosse called them.”
“The Russian papers?”
“He claimed he had come across valuable documents about Russia.”
“Tell me more!”
“I don’t know that much, he was very secretive. He tried to sell the papers to me.”