“A book about the black plague, actually. But there’s something I’ve come to think of: How are things with Lennart now, the brother?”
“Well,” Berglund said uncertainly. “He is what he is.”
“No improvement then. He was always of a different caliber. I remember the grief he caused Albin and Aina though he did work a few years at Diös. It ended with him underneath some prefab material, or perhaps he fell from a scaffolding, I can’t remember. He was always poorly after that.”
“Albin fell off a roof,” Berglund said.
“Typical. It was a job for the rich folk on the other side of the river.”
“Thanks for the beer,” Berglund said.
“Thank you,” Pettersson said and shook Berglund’s outstretched hand. “Feel free to look me up again. Maybe we can sort out that question of why people who work the furnace get so short-tempered.”
Berglund started walking home-barely one kilometer away-rather slowly. It was here in Almtuna it all started, he thought. He dallied outside the antique store where a Santa Claus lit up the display window with a small electric lantern. With its frozen expression and waxy red-painted cheeks the Santa looked a little spooky.
Ymergatan-that was named after the giant Ymer of Norse mythology. He was killed and out of his flesh the world was made and out of his blood all the world’s water. The heavens were formed from his skull and a wall was constructed out of his eyebrows to help defend people against the giants. Midgard, the human realm. That’s where it started. Our history. I wonder if the people who walk up and down this street and who are descendants of Ask and Embla know this story. Probably not.
He couldn’t remember the legend in its entirety but enough to make him pause before crossing the street. A few other people were out walking around, a Volvo drove by, and Berglund had the distinct impression that it was a colleague in an undercover car.
He let his gaze wander down the length of Ymergatan. John’s little sister had died somewhere along this street. “What is it that makes the man?” Oskar Pettersson had asked. The Jonsson family had lived here in Almtuna. The disasters had come one after the other. Now three of them were dead: the little girl, Albin, and his son John. One accident, a possible suicide, and a homicide. As if the collective violence of the street, of the neighborhood, were concentrated upon one family.
Berglund had seen their kind before, the unfortunate ones who seemed to form their own group. Families who appeared destined to suffer accidents, heart attacks, lightning strikes, fires, and other violent deaths rather than draw their last breath peacefully between two sheets. As if they took upon themselves the quota for society as a whole, numerical abnormalities in the predictable world of statistical probability.
One accident led to another, Berglund believed. You could also find the accident-prone in books. Sometimes living, but dead more often than not, talked about, ill-fated, and pitied.
Ymergatan. For half a minute or so Berglund perceived the beauty of the late evening. The snow was blanketed in snow, disturbed only by a few bicycle tracks running down its length like tiny tracks in the land of the giants. Trees were weighed down, resting, waiting, the windows lit up by Christmas stars and candles. The big snowflakes whirled in the streetlights.
My town, Berglund thought. Even though he had grown up on the other side of the river, he knew these streets in Almtuna; they formed the basis for the ideal society that his father, the furnace keeper at Ekeby, had always dreamed of. Berglund was able to thrust the thoughts of John and his family out of his mind only by thinking that Christmas was soon approaching. He had always liked this holiday.
For a moment he wanted to say, I’m a criminal inspector in the middle of a murder investigation. But he would remember the sight of Ymergatan enveloped in snow for a long time.
His city. Oskar Pettersson had talked about skånkarna, an old slang word for university graduates. It had been a long time since Berglund had heard anyone use this word. But Berglund was certainly aware of the fact that there were two cities, two Uppsalas: Oskar’s and the skånkarna’s, with their academic degrees. You didn’t hear people talk about it much anymore, but you still felt the effects of this division. Even at the police station.
Would things have been better if Albin had fallen from any old roof and not one of the buildings of the university? Berglund knew what the old man had been talking about. It was about a class system, the fact that the underclass, Oskar and Albin, always slipped off the roofs of the rich folk. That had been Berglund’s father’s opinion and he had inherited it. He had always voted for the Social Democrats. You seldom heard political talk along party lines down at the station, but he knew he belonged to a minority there. Ottosson voted for the Folkpartiet, not out of a strong sense of political urgency but out of habit and a lack of imagination. They agreed in their analyses of social developments. Ottosson wanted to be like the people, and that’s why he voted for the Liberal Party. Ann Lindell was harder to pin down. She seemed uninterested in politics. Riis belonged to the Conservatives, like Ryde. Sammy Nilsson was for the Center Party, mainly because he had grown up in the country.
Berglund pushed away these thoughts of his colleagues. It was time to get home, but he couldn’t help getting out his cell phone and calling Fredriksson.
“Everything’s fine,” Fredriksson said. “Thanks for asking.”
Berglund heard the fatigue. He hoped the man wouldn’t hit the wall again like he had a couple of years ago.
“There’s a connection between the attack here in Sävja and John’s murder,” Fredriksson continued. “The attacker went to school with this woman and John Jonsson.”
“Has he been apprehended?”
“Still looking.”
“What’s his name?”
“Vincent Hahn. Lives in Sävja but is not at his home. He’s got a nasty blow to the head and is probably quite messed up.”
“Physically or emotionally?”
“Both, I think.”
“Do you need any assistance?”
Berglund wanted to go home, but he couldn’t stop himself from asking.
“Thanks, but we’ll manage,” Fredriksson said.
He hung up and felt a gnawing sense of anxiety. Were they dealing with a lunatic who was targeting former students of Vaksala High School?
Eighteen
Justus placed his hand on the surface of the water, just like John used to do. The fish were so used to it that it would take only a few seconds before they were there, nibbling at his fingers. But that had been with John. Now they didn’t come. No one can claim they’re stupid, Justus thought.
Why had John done that? Was it to test the temperature or simply to make contact with them? Justus had never asked; there was so much he had never found out. Now it was too late, but he was the one who had taken over the care of the aquarium. Berit had never really been interested, though she thought it was beautiful and her protests against the new tank had been lukewarm. She had known her protests would make no difference to John. Justus thought deep down that she had been pleased with John’s passion. There were worse things for a man to be obsessed with.
Justus dropped in the hose and started to drain the water. Berit sat in the kitchen with his grandmother. He could hear their muffled voices, deliberately lowered so he wouldn’t hear. They thought he couldn’t take it. He knew they were talking about the funeral.
When the bucket was half full he transferred the hose to the next one and carried the first out to the bathroom. Three hundred liters had to go. Thirty buckets, though Justus didn’t have the confidence to fill them up as high as John, so he would probably have to empty closer to forty. And then fill it all up again.