Sammy decided to drive out to Lennart’s apartment right away. He thought about calling Ann and discussing the situation with her but held off. She was on maternity leave and deserved to be left in peace.
He was relieved to leave the station. The last few incidents of street crime had resulted in a good deal of desk time, with reports to write and all kinds of calls to make to the necessary authorities and school personnel. Teenage criminals were among the most depressing things Sammy knew. Not that he didn’t like teenagers. He coached a soccer team a few nights a week. He knew how fun kids could be despite their rowdy behavior.
He always thought of the boys on his team when he was confronted with trouble on the street, many of those guys only three or so years older than his soccer players. Two different worlds.
The kids on the team were the well-adjusted sort who came from a relatively affluent suburb. These were children whose parents were involved in their lives, driving them to practices and meets, and who knew the other parents, from neighborhood associations and PTA meetings.
The boys Sammy met through his profession were of a whole different category. They came from one of the large housing districts on the outskirts of the city, an area many Uppsala inhabitants had never even seen, existing for the majority only as a name that often figured in headlines.
A few of the boys did sports. Sammy had seen a few of them at the UIF boxing association, boys with talent who had come in from the street and were now directing their energies at the punching bag.
If we just had the time, he thought, and would often say, we could manage these kids as well. All they lacked was time and resources. Sammy Nilsson had not grown cynical, something he saw in several colleagues. He still defended the gang members, upholding the possibility of life without crime and drugs, but it was a position that claimed a high price to maintain, and he wondered how long he would be able to hold out. The year before, it had been even harder for him to hold on to his positive outlook.
It had also become harder to discuss this with his colleagues. All too often Sammy’s speeches about the importance of good neighborhoods and schools were met only with dismissive comments. It was self-evident, it was written on every wall, they seemed to say, but who had time to bike around Stenhagen and Gottsunda, playing the nice police officer, offering the friendly ear?
When he talked to school counselors, curators, preschool teachers, and social workers, they breathed the same air of defeat. Every day the papers announced budget cuts in the public sector: health care, education, and social services.
Sammy Nilsson and his colleagues were forced to take up the slack.
Lennart Jonsson was woken up by someone banging on the door. The ringer had stopped working over half a year ago. He knew what it was all about. In some ways he was surprised that it had taken so long for the police to turn up.
He opened the door, but immediately turned around and walked back into the apartment.
“Just have to take a whiz,” he yelled.
Sammy Nilsson stepped inside. The air was stale, musty. He waited in the hall. He heard the sound of the toilet being flushed. Next to the mirror there were three framed prints by Carl Larsson. Sammy sensed that Lennart had not chosen them himself. Two coats hung on hooks under the hat shelf. If you overlooked the pungent grocery bags filled with empty beer cans by the door, the sparsely furnished entrance hall looked not unlike the waiting room of Sammy’s dentist, which was located in a 1950s downtown apartment building.
Lennart came out of the bathroom, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, half untucked. He was barefoot and his black hair stood on end. Their eyes met. For a moment Sammy felt as if he were visiting an old friend, and he had the impression that Lennart was thinking the same thing.
“I’m sorry about your brother.”
Lennart nodded, breaking eye contact. When he raised his eyes his expression had changed.
“Should we sit down?”
Lennart nodded again and gestured toward the kitchen, letting Sammy go first.
“What do you think?” Sammy said as a way to begin.
Lennart snorted. He removed a beer from the table.
“You were the one who knew him best. Who wanted to see Little John dead?”
“I don’t know,” Lennart said. “What do you know?”
“We’re trying to establish a clear picture of John’s life, what he was doing these past few months, this past week, the day before yesterday. You know the story. We’re still gathering pieces of the puzzle.”
“I’ve been thinking,” Lennart said. “But I haven’t been able to come up with anyone who would’ve wanted to knock off my bro. He was clean-had been for years.”
He gave Sammy a look as if to say: And don’t you try to pin some shit on him now.
Sammy Nilsson went through the usual questions. Lennart gave short answers. Once, he interrupted himself, walked over to the kitchen counter to get a banana, and consumed it in seconds. He then offered a banana to Sammy, who took one but set it down on the table.
“There’s one guy who spent a lot of time with John. Micke Andersson,” Lennart said. “Have you talked to him?”
“We have,” Sammy said, but without mentioning that Micke had contacted the police the night before.
“There aren’t a lot of us,” Lennart said, and Sammy assumed he was talking about John’s limited circle of friends.
He fetched another banana and ate it just as quickly.
“Some kind of banana diet?” Sammy asked.
Lennart shook his head. He looked thoughtful. Sammy restrained himself from asking further questions.
“The way I live, the people who are closest to you are the most important. Others can rat on you, betray you, but not a brother. Not John. We’ve always helped each other out.”
“For better and for worse, perhaps?”
Lennart snorted again.
“There are some things you’ll never get,” he said. “Why would I trust anyone else?”
No; why would he? Sammy thought.
“Sometimes you have to,” he said.
Lennart smiled faintly.
“Who’s the ‘you’ of ‘there are some things you’ll never get’?” Sammy asked.
“All of you,” Lennart said.
Sammy looked at him. He had heard enough. He knew what would follow-a harangue about the downtrodden members of society.
“When I played Ping-Pong in high school and won a match against the teacher he threw his racket at me. He had just hit a worthless serve, and when I bent over to pick up the ball he threw his racket at me with full force. It caught me behind the ear. Do you want to see the scar?”
Sammy shook his head.
“I was in a remedial class and Ping-Pong was the only thing I was good at. We used to play two, three hours a day.”
“Getting back to John for a moment,” Sammy said. “How were things at home?”
“What?”
“For him, I mean. With Berit.”
“Berit’s all right.”
“I’m sure she is, but how were things between the two of them?”
“Who’s been saying stuff?”
“No one.”
“Glad to hear it,” Lennart said.
The way Sammy saw it, Lennart had armed himself with nonchalance and arrogance. Sammy Nilsson knew he was likely to collapse without it, but nonetheless it irritated him.
“I’m trying to solve your brother’s murder,” he said.
“No shit.”
Sammy left the apartment, hurried down the stairs, and just outside the front door happened to kick an empty can into a flower bed. It landed in a heap of paper trash.
He called Ottosson from the car in order to see if anything new had turned up, but the chief didn’t have much to report. Sixten Wende had started charting movements at the snow dump in Libro. Now they had a preliminary list of all the drivers who usually trucked snow in. More names would probably be added. Wende had taken on the task of calling every last one of them.