The woman started to tell him about the care of the rabbit in great detail. Modig stared into space. He heard voices of other officers coming from the area of the building called the Sea.
“We’ll see what we can do,” Modig said kindly.
“Will someone come out? I have to go in to work. Should I let Ansgar hang there?”
Modig thought for a moment.
“Let him stay where he is,” he said finally.
Tunander came back with a cup of coffee.
“How can you name a rabbit Ansgar?” Modig asked when he hung up.
“What kind was it?” Tunander asked.
“What kind?”
“There are all kinds of different breeds. Didn’t you know that?”
He sat down.
“How did it go?”
“Just some dents,” Tunander said and was immediately serious. “Some bitch drove right into me.”
He shook his head. Modig got up.
“Anything to report?” Tunander asked.
“It’s been quiet. A few calls about Little John.”
“Anything of substance?”
“Maybe. I don’t know,” Modig said absently.
He felt exhausted. Mexico was definitely the right decision.
“He was white,” he said.
“Who?”
“Ansgar,” Modig said and heaved himself out of his chair.
Modig left the building, not to return for another fourteen days, just as a meeting concerning the case of John Jonsson was called to order in the large conference room. The assembled group consisted of the usual people from the Violent Crimes Division, Morenius from the Crime Information Service, forensic specialist Ryde, Julle and Aronsson from the Patrol Division, and Rask, who headed the public relations team. A total of twenty or so individuals in all.
Ottosson presided over the meeting. He was getting better at it. Haver glanced at him. He was sitting on Ottosson’s left side, where Lindell normally sat. It was as if Ottosson sensed what he was thinking about, because at that precise moment he put his hand on Haver’s arm, looked at him, and smiled, just like he always did with Ann Lindell.
The touch lasted only a fraction of a second, but the smile was warm and the nod Ottosson gave him filled Haver with joy. He looked around to see if anyone had registered this gesture of collegiality or even friendship. Berglund, who sat across from Haver, smiled slightly.
Haver was surprisingly tense. He was usually dispirited by the sight of so many people gathered around the table, which could only mean that some atrocious act of violence had been committed. Not that he was sick of his work, but he-like his colleagues-realized that a murder investigation drained resources from the other cases. Some people would go free as a result of the fact that they were all sitting there. That was just the way it was. Violence begets violence, as the saying goes, he thought, and that was literally true in this context. Maybe it would be a case of wife-beating or a downtown brawl that would suffer and only encourage the perpetrators to continue.
The chief talked about sending “the right signals.” A murder investigation signaled an escalation of crime. Haver had always known this, but the insight struck him with new force this morning, perhaps because Sammy Nilsson had been complaining as they were walking into the conference room. He was taking part in a new project involving street crime, started after a number of “incidents”-as the chief put it-three assault cases involving youth gangs, the last on the evening of the Santa Lucia celebration.
Now Sammy was forced to leave this work in order to assist in the Little John case. Haver had seen the dejection in his colleague’s face and he understood it completely. Sammy was their youth man, more so than anyone else on the squad. Assisted by colleagues from Drug Enforcement, he had made large inroads in dissolving the gangs, talking sense into the young men who descended upon the town and outlying suburbs like a pack of wild animals. Those were Sammy’s own words.
“They’re like a pack of animals driven from their hunting grounds,” he had said, without specifying exactly where these hunting grounds were located, or who it was who was driving them. Haver had the impression that it was the gangs who were driving other, more peaceful citizens from the streets.
Ottosson asked for silence and almost immediately everyone around the table stopped talking. The chief paused for a few seconds while the whole room sank into stillness. It was as if he wanted to hold a moment of silence for Little John. Everyone was aware of the fact that Ottosson had known the deceased over the course of his entire adult life. Perhaps that was why everyone, as if in wordless agreement, stopped their chatter and their rustling of papers. A few looked at Ottosson, others stared down at the table.
“Little John is dead,” Ottosson began. “There are probably those of us who don’t think that’s much of a loss.”
He paused again, and Haver, who again cast a quick glance at his boss, sensed his doubt as to how he should continue-or was he wondering how his words were going to affect the assembled officers? Ottosson was always concerned about maintaining an upbeat atmosphere, and Haver expected that he would be very careful not to say anything that might have a negative impact.
“That would be a pity, however,” Ottosson said in a forceful voice. “Little John was once a young kid who took a wrong turn, a hell of a wrong turn. Many of you know his big brother, Lennart, and there you have part of the reason why. I have the advantage of having met their parents, Albin and Aina. Fine, decent people.”
How is he going to pull this off? Haver thought, feeling an almost physical discomfort. Fine people was a phrase Ottosson sometimes used, a note of approval that implied more than adherence to a lawful lifestyle.
Haver looked at Bea, who had spoken to John’s mother to test her reaction, but she sat with her head lowered.
“I know they tried to steer their boys right, but it may have been beyond their power. We know very little of what determines a person’s course of action,” Ottosson said thoughtfully.
Bea lifted her head at this outburst of philosophical speculation. Ottosson looked around with slight embarrassment, as if he had committed an indiscretion, and to Haver’s relief he abandoned the subject.
“Ola,” he said in a different and more familiar tone of voice. “Please run through an account of the events to date.”
Haver started by giving them greetings from Ann Lindell, which he immediately realized was a mistake. He tried to repair this error by quickly establishing the perimeters of the murder case. He hastily sketched out the contours of the case, which he said he hoped his colleagues would flesh out with the results of the forensic investigation, the distilled results of any questioning that had taken place. Other issues they needed to address were: Had the initial investigation of the crime site yielded anything? Had there been any results from going door to door? What were the results of the autopsy? Had the initial investigation of the crime site yielded anything?
Haver proceeded through the points on his list in a systematic fashion. No one interrupted him, and when he finished there was an unusual silence in the room.
Did I forget something? Haver wondered and quickly consulted his notepad.
“Excellent,” Ottosson said and smiled.
“Over to you, Ryde.”
The forensic specialist spoke in his usual morning drawl. The snow dump in Libro had yielded a number of interesting objects, although of course many of these had nothing to do with the murder: empty cigarette packs, toys, car tires, orange traffic cones, the sidewalk advertisement from a local café, two plastic balls, a dead kitten, three ice scrapers, and so on. The most remarkable object recovered so far was a stuffed bird, a herring gull, according to Hugosson, a technician who was also an avid bird-watcher.
Two of the objects seemed significant: a length of green nylon rope, about eight millimeters in diameter, and a bloodstained work glove. Results of the blood analysis were not in yet. It could turn out to belong to John, but it could also have come from any one of the many trucks that frequented the dump. Ryde speculated that a driver could have injured himself, stained the glove with blood, and then tossed it or dropped it accidentally. It was a lined winter glove of the label Windsor Elite.