“Sell? What would you do with them?”
“I’m a journalist.”
“And you said?”
“No, thanks.”
Sammy Nilsson looked at him pensively. Brant wanted to get home as soon as possible, the headache had come back with full force, but he understood there were more questions.
It was Sammy Nilsson who unexpectedly got up from the table.
“I’ll drive you home,” he said. “You don’t have any other baggage?”
“I’m guessing you know where I live.”
“I know how you live,” said Sammy Nilsson, taking off.
It took a few moments before Anders Brant understood what he meant, and he quickly caught up with the policeman, who had now made it to the exit.
“What do you mean? Have you been in my apartment?”
Sammy Nilsson nodded, but without slowing down.
“I’ll explain,” he said, pointing to the black BMW parked in a space reserved for taxis.
“That’s a break-in, damn it!”
Sammy Nilsson stopped short.
“Listen up now,” he said. “If you had talked with Ann, been a little more upfront with her, then that wouldn’t have been necessary. So stop the shouting. Do you want a ride or not?”
They stared at each other for a few seconds.
“No, thanks,” said Anders Brant at last. “I’ll take a taxi.”
He saw the vacillation in the policeman’s face.
“Then I’m compelled to take you with me anyway,” said Sammy Nilsson.
“You’re a senseless character,” said Brant. “First a little small talk and coffee, then you bring out the coercive measures.”
“You were actually suspected of complicity to homicide.”
“And now?”
“Stop talking nonsense, damn it!”
Anders Brant smiled for the first time in several days. Most recently was when the Assis family visited him for the last time in the hospital. He opened the back door, threw in his bag, and made himself comfortable in the back seat.
It was not until they passed the exit to Knivsta that Sammy Nilsson broke the silence.
“You played bandy with Gränsberg, is that right?”
“Why do you ask about things you already know?”
“And Jeremias Kumlin. He’s dead too, struck down in his garage. Did you know about that?”
“What the hell are you saying?”
Anders Brant leaned forward. Sammy Nilsson turned his head and their eyes met for a moment.
Sammy Nilsson briefly told how they had found Kumlin’s body in the garage.
“What the hell is this?” Anders Brant exclaimed.
“We’re wondering that too. What were you doing at Ingegerd Melander’s place?”
“Who’s that?”
“We found your fingerprints in her bathroom.”
“Is that Bosse’s lady friend?”
Sammy Nilsson nodded and gave him a quick look in the rearview mirror.
“I was there, but I didn’t remember her name. Bosse took me there. We were going to talk, I was going to record a little, Bosse and a few others in his gang. You can listen to it if you want.”
“Okay,” said Sammy Nilsson. “Tell me about the documents Bosse wanted to sell to you.”
“Like I said, I don’t know what they were about. Bosse was really desperate and thought he was sitting on a gold mine, but I had a hard time believing that. It would never occur to me to throw away fifty thousand on something without knowing what it was. Besides, I don’t have that kind of money. And I don’t buy information, which I explained to him.”
“Did he show you any samples?”
“No, he waved a few papers, that was all. I took it as a little confused talk. He was going to start a company and needed money.”
“We know about that,” said Sammy Nilsson. “Where did the papers come from?”
“I don’t know.”
“He never mentioned Jeremias Kumlin?”
“No.”
Sammy Nilsson stopped his questions. They came out on the plain south of Uppsala and the city’s thorny profile emerged, with the cathedral, the castle, and the chimneys of the heating plant as the most prominent landmarks.
When Anders Brant saw the industrial area on the south edge of the city, he was reminded of Bosse Gränsberg, his desperation, how he had burst into tears in the trailer. I betrayed him, he thought, but dismissed the self-reproach. He could not have acted any other way. Or could he have?
“What kind of condition are you in?” the policeman interrupted Brant’s thoughts.
“Pretty good now,” he answered.
He told about the accident in a little more detail and could not keep from mentioning that he had visited a jail in Salvador and about his impressions.
“What were you doing there?”
“Giving false testimony,” Anders Brant answered.
He saw the policeman’s wry smile in the rearview mirror, and found himself liking him more and more.
“I’ll drive you home, okay? I’ll wait while you get rid of your baggage, then we’ll go to the police building, so we can get everything on tape. Maybe you want to towel yourself off too?”
“Preferably not in the police building,” said Anders Brant.
“You don’t want to run into Ann?”
Anders Brant did not reply. He did not think the other man had anything to do with it. Ann and his story was their business, but at the same time he was curious about what Ann had said.
“She’s a good woman,” he said at last.
“So treat her like one,” said Sammy Nilsson.
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean.”
Anders Brant perceived it as a verbal wrestling match, an exchange of words he did not want to have, that he was not prepared for. What did he know about Sammy Nilsson? Nothing. And regardless of that, he only wanted to go home, lie down in bed, and sleep.
“I’m just about done,” he said. “Can we have this chat tomorrow?”
“We’ve got to do it today,” Sammy Nilsson decided.
Forty-six
Johnny Andersson poured another glass, the last one. He was crying. Alcohol always made him teary eyed, but some of it was the real thing. Maybe it was the old knick-knacks, dusty but otherwise untouched by the passage of time, that made him boozily sentimental. Hadn’t the vase with the inscription Souvenir from Leksand been there for ages? Johnny seemed to recall that sometime in the fifties his parents cycled around Lake Siljan. How did they come up with the idea of cycling all that way? And why drag a vase home with them? But that’s how it was then, he thought with a mixture of envy and contempt.
The whole cottage was like a nostalgia museum, and he willingly let himself be carried back to his childhood. He sobbed over vanished smells, memories, and possibilities.
This is what I have, he thought, and I’m not responsible for any of it. He turned, stroked his hand tenderly across the flowery wallpaper, and then tipped over in bed.
“If only I could sleep,” he mumbled, but knew he was too sober to fall asleep. The alcohol was really gone now, and along with it the possibility of fooling his body.
For three days he had stayed at the allotment garden cottage. Sleeping over was not allowed, but he did not think anyone even noticed he had been there. He stayed inside and did not make himself conspicuous, did not even turn on the radio. He had been given notice; the annual fee to the association had not been paid for several years. The only reason the association had not taken action was that his parents were among the original gardeners; his father had been chairman for many years. He knew that as soon as his mother was gone, he would be thrown out.
The old Nordlander woman, who had the cabin right across the narrow street, had been digging in her plot for a couple of days, and then biked home in the evening. But if she had seen him she wouldn’t dare say a word. She was afraid of him, always had been.
He was living on rye bread, sausage, and powdered mashed potatoes. But now supplies were running low and what was worse, all the beer was consumed and the bottle of aquavit he brought with him was empty.