When she picked him up his face came to rest against her throat. The special blend of sweet and sour smells that rose from the chubby body, now resting warm and heavy against her chest, made her hug him gently and coo at him.
Ann carefully laid him in her unmade double bed, unbuttoned her blouse and the nursing bra, and lay down beside him. He knew what was coming and his arms worked with furious anticipation.
The little one sucked eagerly while Ann adjusted herself into a comfortable position. She stroked his soft hair and closed her eyes, thinking about Lennart Jonsson and his brother.
Thirteen
Mikael Andersson sat down in the visitor’s chair. Fredriksson gathered a few folders together into a pile.
“I’m glad you could stop by,” he said.
“Of course,” Mikael said.
“You may be the last person to have seen Little John alive,” Fredriksson began.
“Except the killer.”
“Except the killer, yes. Had you known him long?”
“My whole life. We grew up in the same neighborhood, went to school together, and hung out after that.”
“Why did you continue to associate with him?”
“He was my friend,” Mikael said and looked at Fredriksson.
“Did you get along well?”
Mikael nodded. Fredriksson thought that the man in front of him in no way corresponded to the image he had formed of him when they talked on the phone. Mikael Andersson was short, only around 165 centimeters Fredriksson guessed, and solidly built, fat actually. Fredriksson knew he installed metal roofing but had trouble imagining him moving around on a rooftop.
“What did you do together?”
“We’d get together, bet on horses, play a little bandy sometimes.”
“Sirius isn’t up to much these days,” Fredriksson said.
“Right. What else do you want to know?”
“You must know Berit and Lennart.”
“Sure.”
“So, tell me about them.”
“Lennart is a whole chapter, but you must know all about him. Berit’s a brick. They’ve always been together.”
Micke leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and interlaced his fingers before he continued. Fredriksson noted the changes in his face as a wave of red washed over the pugdy cheeks and throat.
“She’s all right,” he said. “It won’t be easy for her now that John’s gone. And the kid too. I don’t get it. He seemed the same as always. Have you got any leads?”
“Nothing too promising,” Fredriksson admitted.
“I think he was picked up by someone who later killed him. I just don’t know who that would be.”
“Someone offered him a ride?”
“But who would that be?”
“You can’t think of anyone who had an ax to grind with John?”
“No, nothing that would have made them want to kill him. John knew how to toe the line.”
“How was he doing financially?”
“He wasn’t rolling in money, but they managed. Things got worse after he stopped working for Sagge.”
“Why did he stop?”
“There wasn’t enough work, they said.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“Sagge and his wife. She’s the one who calls the shots.”
Fredriksson pinched his nose.
“Someone picked him up, you said. Did John have any business out in Libro? Was there some company out there he needed to visit, or a friend?”
“Not that I know of. He didn’t have too many friends.”
“Did you ever see John with drugs?”
Mikael Andersson shot a quick glance at Fredriksson. He inhaled deeply and breathed out through his nose. Fredriksson had the impression that Micke was trying to decide whether or not to tell the truth.
“A long time ago, maybe. But that was all over and done with.”
“How long ago are we talking about?”
Micke made a gesture as if to say: God only knows, it must have been years ago.
“When we were young,” he said finally. “Twenty years ago.”
“He never mentioned drugs after that?”
“Talk is one thing, but I never saw John with any drugs the past few years.”
Fredriksson leaned back, put his hands behind his head, and looked at him. The police officer’s face revealed nothing. He sat there for half a minute, then slowly put his hands back down, leaned back over the desk, and wrote a few lines in his notebook.
“Tell me about John,” he said. “What kind of person was he?”
“He was quiet, just like his dad. His dad stuttered badly, but not John. He was a good friend. He didn’t have a lot of friends at school. It was just me and a couple of other guys. He’d always been interested in fish. I don’t know where that came from. Maybe it was his uncle, Eugene, who started the whole thing. We used to go fishing with him. He had a cabin out towards Faringe.”
Mikael paused. Fredriksson sensed that he was trying to go back ten, twenty years in time.
“He was happy there, in the dinghy,” he continued. “It was a little lake. A cold bastard of a lake, with the forest growing right down to the shoreline.”
“What did you catch?”
“Perch and pike, mostly. John sometimes talked about going back there again, but we never did, like with so many things. When we sat in the boat it was like being kids again. We could row from shore to shore without effort. The only break in the forest was the clearing where Eugene’s house was. It was a converted shed with a storage locker made out of sugar crates fastened together. The lake was like a sealed room. John oftened talked about those trips. In late winter Eugene would take us wood-grousing. We walked in the darkness over the swaying ice until we came to a felling area where he had made a shelter out of twigs and branches. We curled up in there. John always liked little places like that. The small lake and the tiny shelter.”
“He also worked for a small company,” Fredriksson added.
Mikael nodded.
“He wasn’t really a troublemaker, not even when he was younger. As long as we stuck to Ymer and Frodegatan, everything was fine. When we were little you could get almost anything in Almtuna, our suburb. There were five grocery stores within ten minutes’ walk. Now there isn’t even a place called Almtuna. Have you seen that sign, over by the Vaksala school?”
Fredriksson shook his head.
“It says ‘Fålhagen.’ All the old names are disappearing. I don’t know who makes those decisions, that no place should retain the old names. Eriksdal and Erikslund are also gone. Even Stabby is called ‘Outer Luthagen.’”
“I’ve moved here recently,” said Fredriksson, who was not familiar with all the old areas and districts of Uppsala.
“I think they do it to confuse us.”
“‘Luthagen’ probably sounds better than ‘Stabby’ in the real estate ads.”
“Maybe,” Mikael said, “it’s about the money, then. I think about the old days more now. Must be age.”
“And what do you see?” said Fredriksson, who found he was enjoying the discussion.
“The yards. Kids. There were a lot of us. John and Lennart and others.” Mikael stopped and his face took on a sad and starved expression.
“It was a long time ago, but it feels so close,” he said. “When did it all go to hell?”
“For John and Lennart, you mean?”
“Not only them. You know their old man worked on the railroad. His dad too. He helped build Port Arthur, which was supposed to be employee housing for rail folk. But we lived up on Frodegatan. I felt a real connection with them back then-not anymore. That’s what gets me. I take a walk through the old neighborhoods sometimes. For John and Lennart I think it all started back when Lennart was twelve and me and John were nine. We had been playing bandy in Fålhagen. There was a big field out there that was hosed down every winter. Lennart had swiped a wallet in the dressing room from a guy named Håkan. I sometimes ran into him downtown. Lennart took out the wallet as we were teetering home on our skates. Nineteen kronor. We were scared shitless, but Lennart just laughed.”