Haver pushed the paper aside. He thought about how he should organize the day. He took a look at the list of tasks he had assigned himself the night before.
Bea was going to search John’s apartment in Gränby. Sammy would maybe accompany her. He was good with kids. And Haver thought John’s son would probably like dealing with a male police officer.
John’s brother had to be questioned, and they would have to question the wife again. Bea hadn’t managed to get much out of her during their conversation yesterday.
According to Berit Jonsson, her husband had taken the bus downtown. Which bus? They could probably find the driver. He or she would perhaps recall at which stop John had gotten off. The pet-store line of inquiry also had to be pursued to see if he had bought a pump and in that case where and when. They had to do everything possible to try to re-create John’s steps on his last afternoon.
Haver dismissed all thoughts of the murder investigation, pulled the paper back over, and read it thoroughly. He had plenty of time and his headache was getting better. He assuaged his hunger with a banana and some yogurt.
He wasn’t tired exactly, but tense in preparation for the day’s activities. If they could establish the movements of John’s last days relatively quickly, their chances of solving the case increased dramatically.
It was no accident, nor was it a murder committed in haste, he was convinced of that. The murderer or murderers would be found in John’s circle of acquaintances. It shouldn’t be too hard to establish a cast of characters.
The motive? Money, Bea had said. Drugs, was Riis’s suggestion, although Ottosson had dismissed this, saying that John Jonsson had never been a dealer. The chief had gone as far as to claim that John had hated drugs.
Haver leaned toward the theory that it was money. An old debt that had not been repaid, a lender who went out of control, who perhaps had been provoked. He would ask Sammy to compile a list of known lenders. Haver knew of some already, above all Sundin from Gävle, who sometimes made guest appearances in Uppsala, also the brothers Häll and the “Gym Coach,” a bodybuilder who had a background in karate. Were there others? Sammy would know.
Debt. It must have been a substantial sum to motivate murder, Haver mused. What exactly constitutes a “substantial sum”? One hundred thousand? Half a million?
It struck him suddenly that the murderer was perhaps also reading the morning paper at this precise moment. In contrast to the newspaper reporters and the police, the killer knew the whole story. Consumed by this thought, Haver got up and walked to the window. It was snowing. The lights were on in a couple of windows on the other side of the street. Perhaps he was there, in one of the apartments on the other side?
Haver snorted at these musings but couldn’t rid himself of the thought that the murderer was also awake right now. The thought both appealed to him and appalled him. He liked it, because it meant that the murderer was unable to sleep in peace, did not feel secure, and was worried by the words that the police “had recovered certain clues.” He was thinking, probably for the hundredth time, of how he had transported the dead or dying man to Libro. Had he dropped something or left tracks? There was perhaps some small detail that he had missed, a mistake that he sensed, that was now depriving him of sleep in the wee hours. But he disliked thinking of how the murderer was free to read the paper, drink his coffee and wander out into the morning, sit in the car or perhaps even board a plane, only to disappear from reach.
“Stay where you are,” Haver mumbled.
“Did you say something?”
Rebecka appeared in the doorway. He hadn’t heard her get up. She had the green nightgown on. Her hair was messy and she looked tired. He guessed that she had been up nursing the little one.
“I was just talking to myself,” he said. “I’m reading about the murder.”
Rebecka yawned and went to the bathroom. Haver cleared his things up in the kitchen, refilled the coffeemaker and switched it on. He felt torn again. The peace and quiet of the morning was over and so was the possibility of quiet reflection, but at the same time he loved having her there with him, not least in the early morning.
It was something left over from childhood. In his home, the mornings had always been unusually peaceful, a pleasurable time for family members to be together. They had been an unusual family in that they had all been morning people, almost to the point where they tried to compete over who could appear the most cheerful and friendly.
Haver had tried to re-create this with Rebecka, even though she often bordered on a state of complete exhaustion in the mornings. He would make her coffee, toast, and, before she had gotten pregnant, a boiled egg and roe spread. Now she couldn’t stand the smell of either egg or roe.
He ate his eggs with a feeling of guilt, but he couldn’t bring himself to completely exclude them from his morning ritual.
Rebecka returned from the bathroom. She smiled and ruffled his hair.
“You’re a mess,” she said.
He grabbed her, pulling her close, and hugged her, with his nose pressed against her stomach. He knew she was reading the paper over his head, but he drew in her smell and for a short while forgot all about the black headlines.
Nine
Modig took the call at seven thirty five A.M. He was working the night shift and was still on duty. His colleague Tunander had had a car accident on his way to work and wouldn’t be in until eight.
Not that it troubled Modig unduly. No one was waiting for him at home and he was still feeling unusually alert. His vacation was due to start soon. He had taken off more days than usual and booked a trip to Mexico departing on December 23. When the call came he was wondering what the food would be like. His experiences with so-called Mexican food in Sweden had not filled him with great expectations.
“Someone has strangled Ansgar!” a woman said, clearly distraught.
Modig had little patience with people who panted or even breathed audibly on the phone.
“Please calm yourself,” he said.
“But he’s dead!”
“Who’s dead?”
“Ansgar! I already told you.”
“What’s your name?”
“Gunilla Karlsson.”
She wasn’t breathing as heavily now.
“Where do you live?”
The woman managed to tell him her address with some difficulty, and Modig wrote it down in his usual scrawl.
“Tell me exactly what happened.”
“I walked out onto the patio and there he was, hanging on the fence.”
“Ansgar?”
“Yes. I saw at once that he was dead. And he’s not even mine. How am I ever going to explain this? Malin is going to be devastated.”
“Who is Ansgar?”
“My neighbor’s rabbit.”
Modig couldn’t help smiling. He made a sign to Tunander, who had just walked in, and wrote “dead rabbit” on the pad of paper so that he could read it.
“And you found him on your patio?”
“I was looking after him. They’re away on a trip and I was going to look after Ansgar while they were gone. I was supposed to give him food and water every morning.”
“Did someone string him up or did he get caught on the fence?”
“He has a rope around his neck. He was murdered.”
Does killing a rabbit qualify as murder? Modig wondered as he wrote “murdered” on the pad of paper.
“When did you see him last?”
Tunander left the room chuckling.
“Last night as I was checking on him. Oh, dear God,” she said, and Modig knew she was thinking of her neighbor, Malin.
“Do you have any idea who would be likely to strangle a rabbit?” Modig asked and was suddenly hit by a wave of fatigue.