Mossa was a gambler known for his carefulness. He had not gotten himself tangled up with the law over the past few years. This was not because he had kept on the right side of the law, but rather it was a mark of his ability. He had the reputation of being beyond the police and prosecution.
Lennart had known him for about ten years. He knew that John had sometimes played with Mossa, who had liked his quiet ways. John rarely gambled large amounts and never in the big leagues, but was good when it came to the middle ranks, the enjoyable small-time games, which were not about the money.
Mossa didn’t play at the clubs except very occasionally a game of roulette, but when it came to card games he played only privately.
Lennart had joined him once or twice but had neither the tenacity nor the funds required.
“I heard he was in Stockholm these days,” the bartender said. “But he usually comes back to town at Christmas. His mom lives here.”
That’s more like it, Lennart thought. He knew where Mossa’s mom lived but he could hardly pay her a visit to ask her for her son’s whereabouts. Mossa would go ballistic. But there were other ways.
“Thanks,” he said and laid a hundred-kronor note on the counter.
He stepped out onto Kungsgatan and followed St. Petersgatan east. He stopped outside the Salvation Army and lit a cigarette, looking at the building and thinking back to the one time he had celebrated Easter there as a child, dressed up as a wolf cub. It was one of the neighborhood kids, Bengt-Ove, who had talked him into going. He had eaten a ton of Easter eggs.
One time, in later life, Lennart had stumbled into the Salvation Army drunk out of his mind. Bengt-Ove had been there to greet him. He must have stayed after their wolf-cub days. They had looked at each other for a few seconds and then Lennart had turned on his heel without saying a word.
He had felt shame that time, ashamed of his drunkenness and filth. Every time he walked past, that feeling of shame returned. It wasn’t Bengt-Ove’s fault. He would probably not have blamed him for his dissolute lifestyle, ratty clothes, stinking breath, or slurred speech. Sometimes Lennart wondered what would have happened if he too had stayed. He had friends who had been saved and left crime and alcohol behind. Would he have managed it? He didn’t think so, but the visit had awakened the thought of another life. He didn’t want to admit it, but secretly he thought of the hasty, unplanned encounter as a wasted opportunity. It was probably just a thought constructed in hindsight, like so many others, but it was an appealing thought, especially in moments of regret.
He didn’t blame anyone. Earlier he would have done so, but now his worldview was clear enough so he understood that only he was responsible. What good did it do to moan about injustice? He had had the chance. He had met Bengt-Ove’s gaze and he had seen it there, but had chosen to walk away.
It had been winter then, like today, but the Salvation Army windows were dark and it was quiet. Lennart kept walking.
The list of names was in his coat pocket. Three names had been crossed off; five remained. He was not going to give up until his brother’s murderer was checked off. These eight guys were going to help him.
He decided to stop by and see Micke. They hadn’t talked since it had happened. He knew the police had been talking to him and maybe he had picked something up.
When Lennart arrived, Micke was about to go to bed. The last few days had wiped him out but he had found it hard to sleep.
“Oh, it’s you, is it?”
He didn’t like Lennart, but he was John’s brother.
“I’m sorry about John,” he added.
Lennart walked into the apartment without saying a word, in that presumptuous way that drove Micke crazy.
“Do you have any beer?”
Micke was surprised that he even asked. Usually he just walked over to the fridge and helped himself.
“I hear the pigs have been talking to you,” Lennart said and popped open the can that Micke handed him.
Micke nodded and sat down at the kitchen table.
“What did they say?”
“They asked me about John. He came by here on the day he died, you know.”
“He did? No one’s said anything about that to me.”
“He stopped in the late afternoon.”
“Why did he do that?”
“For Chrissakes, Lennart.”
The fatigue made Micke irritable.
“What did he say?”
“We just talked about normal stuff.”
“Like what?”
He knew what Lennart was after, and tried to re-create an image of a living John, not trouble-free exactly, but happy, with bottles of wine and spirits and a family he was eager to get home to.
“He didn’t say anything?”
“About what?”
“About some shit going on, you know what I’m talking about.”
Micke got up and helped himself to a beer as well.
“He didn’t say anything out of the ordinary.”
“Think hard now.”
“Don’t you think I’ve thought about it? Every damn second since it happened.”
Lennart looked at him searchingly, as if weighing his words, and took a drink from the can while continuing to gaze at him.
“Stop staring,” Micke said.
“Did you two cook something up?”
“Shut up!”
“Horses and shit,” said Lennart, who almost never got involved in the gambling parties that were formed and dissolved on a regular basis-mostly because his ability to pay up was generally doubted.
“Nothing like that,” Micke said in a voice steady and assured but in which Lennart sensed a moment’s hesitation, a look that flickered unsteadily for a tenth of a second.
“Are you sure? We’re talking about my only goddamn brother here.”
“My best friend,” said Micke.
“Fuck you if you’re not telling me the truth.”
“Was there anything else? I’d like to turn in.”
Lennart changed the subject.
“You coming to the funeral?”
“Of course.”
“Do you understand it?”
Lennart’s eyes and the gaze he directed straight down into the table-as if the worn Formica surface could offer any explanation for the murder of his brother-revealed the depth of his despair.
Micke stretched out a hand and put it gently on Lennart’s arm. Lennart looked up, and where Micke had only ever seen alcohol-induced weepiness he now saw the glimmer of real tears.
“No,” Micke said hoarsely. “I don’t get it. Not John of all people.”
“John of all people,” Lennart echoed. “That’s what I’ve been thinking too. When there’s so much scum.”
“Go home and try to get some sleep. You look like shit.”
“I won’t stop until I get ’im.”
Micke felt torn. He didn’t want to hear Lennart’s thoughts of revenge, but he also didn’t want to be left alone. The fatigue was starting to wear off and he knew it would be a long night. He recognized the symptoms. He had suffered from insomnia for many years. From time to time it got better and he sank into a deep, dreamless sleep that bordered on an unconsciousness that felt like a gift. But then the wakeful nights returned, the open wounds. That’s how it felt. Burning sores that ravaged him on the inside.
“What does Aina say?”
“I don’t think she really understands,” Lennart said. “She’s confused as it is and this will break her. John was her favorite ever since Margareta died.”
John and Lennart’s little sister, Margareta, had died in 1968 when she was run over by a delivery van outside the grocery store on Väderkvarnsgatan. It was a subject that the brothers had never touched on, and her name was never mentioned. Photographs in which she appeared were put away.
There were those who said that Aina and Albin had never fully recovered from losing their daughter. Some even hinted that Albin had taken his own life when he slid off the roof of the Skytteanum that day in April in the early 1970s. Others, especially his fellow workers, maintained that he had been sloppy with the safety ropes and hadn’t managed to compensate by gaining a foothold on the slippery roof.