Åke Rosenberg was contacted. He was in the middle of a blasting job in Mehedeby in north Uppland. He confirmed that he was the one who owned the cottage but said he had not been there since the spring.
“I come out twice a year to rake leaves and do basic maintenance.”
“Does anyone else have access to the cottage?”
“No,” Åke Rosenberg lied. “It must be some young devil who did it. I’ll come by tomorrow when I get back to town.”
As soon as they finished, he called his brother Konrad. Åke was angry, but also pleased. The cottage was insured and now he was spared the task of pulling it down-something he had been planning to do for years. He had toyed with the idea of building a house and moving out there.
“When were you there last?” he asked Konrad.
“Where?”
Konrad sensed that something was up and had a deep fear of his brother.
“Answer the question!”
“It must have been awhile,” Konrad said.
“It’s burned down. According to the cops only soot is left. I thought you might have set it on fire. It wouldn’t have surprised me in any case.”
Konrad Rosenberg sank down on the hall floor. A fortune up in smoke.
“I said nothing to the cops about you spending time there. I thought that was best. One never knows what you get up to with your drinking buddies. So keep your mouth shut, otherwise there can be problems with the insurance company.”
“Sure,” Konrad said faintly and hung up.
It took him an hour to work up enough courage to call Slobodan Andersson.
Twenty-Nine
What is happening? Slobodan Andersson wondered. First Armas and now this.
Never before had anyone treated Slobodan Andersson in this way, but now he was too alarmed to be really angry. This development put Armas’s death in a new light. It had not been a robbery-related killing, an accident that he died. And how could anyone know about the cottage?
Konrad Rosenberg assured him he had said nothing and Slobodan was inclined to believe him. Even if Rosenberg was a zero he was smart enough not to reveal the source of his wealth.
Could it have been a coincidence that the house burned down only an hour or so after he and Rosenberg had been there? And now the cop was coming to see him. Did they suspect anything. Did they see a connection between the murder and the fire?
Slobodan walked to his window and looked out. On the other side of the railway there was group of schoolchildren on bikes with a teacher in the lead. An older man was walking his dog and a couple of women turned the corner toward the center of town. Long rows of cars were parked in the parking lot below his window. Everything appeared normal and yet it wasn’t. Someone, or more than one, was out to get him.
Suddenly it struck him that there were only three people who had known about the cottage: Rosenberg, Armas, and himself. Had Armas revealed the hiding place to anyone?
The thought was so inconceivable that he immediately dismissed it, but the very fact that it had appeared depressed him even further. After pouring himself a large cognac, he found himself back at the window, staring at the cars and the passersby.
Had someone followed him and Rosenberg to the cottage? He took a swallow of cognac. There were too many questions. Take it easy, he told himself, take the questions one by one, that’s what Armas would have done. Grief for his friend burned in his chest like acid. The taste of cognac in his mouth made him nauseated, but even so he returned to the wet bar and refilled his glass. The doorbell rang at the same moment that he raised the snifter to his lips, making him jump, spilling some cognac on his shirt. Then he remembered about the female officer.
“I’m coming!” he yelled automatically, as if he had been caught red-handed. He looked out the window to the parking lot. It would not have surprised him if it had been full of blue-and-white patrol cars.
Ann Lindell was alone. That soothed his nerves somewhat. At the last visit he had been irritated by the other officer’s presence, how he sneakily moved around beyond Slobodan’s field of vision.
Now he had control. He placed her in the white sofa that was expensive and contemporary but in which it was completely impossible to sit comfortably and at ease.
She smiled, but not particularly warmly, and, without any small talk, started to ask him if he had thought of anything new on top of what he had already told them.
He shook his head. “Say as little as possible” went through his head, and the idea reassured him. They know nothing, they are fumbling in the dark and trying to get more information from me.
“We think we know where Armas died,” Lindell said. “Was murdered,” she added.
He waited for more, but it didn’t come. Instead she posed a new question.
“Could Armas have been involved in things that were unknown to you?
“Excuse me, but I don’t remember your first name,” Slobodan said.
“Ann, Ann Lindell.”
He nodded.
“Could this have been the case?”
“Excuse me?”
Lindell repeated the question and Slobodan read from her expression that he could not drive her too far.
“No,” he said firmly. “I knew Armas as well as myself. He was a friend, like a brother to me.”
Lindell sat quietly for a moment. Slobodan glanced down at his chest. The cognac stain bothered him.
“Even brothers can let you down,” she said, but did not proceed to develop this thought, simply continuing with her somewhat haphazard line of questioning. “I was thinking of the tattoo. Isn’t it strange that you, if you were as close as you say, did not know what it represented? You must have seen it on numerous occasions. Weren’t you curious?”
“Armas was my friend, not my partner or someone I snuggled with. He was reserved but unquestionably loyal.”
“So you didn’t snuggle?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did Armas meet women?”
Slobodan stared at her for a few seconds before answering.
“It happened, but seldom.”
“You mentioned last time that there was a woman in his life.”
“That was more than ten years ago. She disappeared.”
“Could Armas have been interested in men?”
Slobodan burst into laughter. “My apologies, but this is too funny. You can count yourself lucky that Armas is not here to hear you.”
“We found some pornographic materials in his apartment that leads us to believe this,” Lindell said and met his gaze.
“Armas was not gay, whatever you have cooked up,” Slobodan asserted with a steadiness in his voice that surprised him. “I don’t want you to sully his memory, suggest a lot of nonsense that hasn’t got the least to do with his death.”
“Would it bother you if this were the case, if Armas was attracted to other men?”
“What do you mean, ‘other men’?”
“Would it?”
“That is the lowest! That is a pure insult. Should-”
“I have no homophobia,” Lindell interrupted calmly.
The exchange went on for several minutes. Slobodan thought longingly of another cognac. This ape, who insolently enough had kicked off her shoes and pulled her legs up under her, was egging him on like no one had done in decades. But he knew he couldn’t strike back.
“In reality, you have nothing,” he said abruptly, with a fitting blend of contempt and exasperation.
“On the contrary, we have a great deal,” Lindell said. “We know that Armas amassed a, perhaps not a fortune exactly, but at least a significant amount of money.”
“How much?” Slobodan let out.
Lindell smiled.
“Perhaps the two of you were not close enough that he cared to discuss it,” she said.
Slobodan did not answer. Instead he stood up, walked over to the wet bar, and poured out the cognac.
“We also know that Armas most likely knew his killer.”