“I’m not so sure,” Sammy said. “We can drop the question of motive here. This guy is a nut case and simply did something on impulse. Maybe he bumped into John, recognized him from their school days. Maybe something had happened between them a long time ago and it led to a confrontation.”
“But where would such a confrontation have taken place?” Morenius said. “On Vaksalagatan downtown where John waited for the bus? Where did the murder, not to mention the torture, actually occur, and how did Hahn transport the body to Libro?”
Morenius shook his head.
“We know very little about Hahn,” Sammy said. “Maybe he had access to another apartment, maybe even to a car. We haven’t actually met a single person yet who knew him and could tell us how he spends his days.”
Ottosson scratched his head.
“I think we can disregard Hahn for now,” he said, but he did not sound entirely convinced.
“Little John’s killer is one of these poker players or someone else who keeps to society’s fringes,” Berglund said.
“We have to proceed with open minds,” Ottosson said. “Not lose the tempo. It’s very easy to lose one’s focus, even unintentionally.”
“Okay,” Haver said. “Eight guys, excluding John, were there that night. Ljusnemark gave us all the names. Four of them, plus Ljusnemark, have been questioned today. That leaves three remaining. One of them is abroad, possibly in Holland. His mother lives there. One has disappeared from the face of the earth, and the third is Mossa, the Iranian, whom we all know and who appears to be out of town for the moment. We have talked to his brother and mother, who live here.”
“Who is the one in Holland?”
“Dick Lindström.”
“The one with the teeth?”
Haver nodded.
“And who is the person who has disappeared from the face of the earth, as you put it?”
“One Allan Gustav Rosengren. He has the nickname The Lip. He’s been convicted twice of trafficking in stolen goods. The last time was five years ago. He has no permanent address. The last one is in Mälarhöjden two years ago when he was renting a room from an old lady. He moved out and since then he has disappeared from all sources.”
“One with teeth, and one with a lip,” Riis said.
“Can we rule out Ljusnemark?” Morenius asked.
“I think so,” Haver said. “Too much of a coward. I can’t see him cutting off a finger.”
“You’re assuming the motive is money?”
“Gambling debts don’t seem likely to me,” said Haver. “Everyone so far corroborates the fact that John won. The alleged amounts have varied somewhat but seem to cluster around two hundred thousand. If John had had an outstanding debt he would have paid up.”
“Maybe he didn’t want to?”
“Well, that’s a possibility.”
“Maybe it whet his appetite and he went on to play more games in which he accumulated debt?”
“Even more possible,” Haver said. “The game took place sometime at the end of October. There was a lot of time for poker between then and the murder.”
“I don’t agree,” Ottosson said. “Little John was smart and cautious by nature. He would never have risked losing so much money.”
“But to win in the first place he must already have had a lot. Many of these guys say he was betting freely, almost wildly. No one had seen him play this way before.”
“Maybe that’s why he won. Everyone was taken by surprise,” Fredriksson said.
“Can someone simply have been ticked off?” Morenius asked. He always had a question.
“Not enough to commit murder,” Haver said.
He wanted someone to think of something new. Everything that had come out so far were things he had already mulled over in his mind, but at the same time he knew the discussion had to proceed in this way in order to eventually construct a likely scenario.
“If we return to Hahn,” Ryde, the forensic expert, said. “It’s clear that Vivan Molin was strangled sometime this morning. Hahn had spent the night, we have recovered samples of his hair from the bed in the room he most likely would have used. Today’s paper had been crumpled up and shoved to the bottom of the trash, as if he had tried to hide it from her. The phone cord has been torn from the wall. He may have been trying to prevent her from calling, or else it was something he grabbed when he wanted to strangle her. In some way, we think, she found out that he had attacked Karlsson in Sävja.”
“Radio or TV,” Fredriksson said. “There was a radio in the kitchen.”
Ryde nodded. Only Fredriksson could interrupt him without getting a caustic remark.
“True. We’ll have to check if the Sävja incident was reported in the morning news. There’s no trace of a third person, even if we can’t rule it out. Murder, unclear motive, either uncontrolled impulse or to keep someone quiet.”
“Excellent,” Ottosson said and smiled, a smile that bore witness to great fatigue. He was running a fever and several of them had already suggested he go home to bed, not least Lundin, who refused to get anywhere near him.
“How did he get from Akademiska Hospital to Johannesbäck?” Berglund asked. “He must have had access to a car.”
“It’s not very likely that he took a bus,” Fredriksson agreed. “We’ll have to check with the taxi companies.”
“The only thing we can do is try to find any acquaintances of Hahn and continue patrolling the areas. Ottosson asserts there’s a high probability he’ll be drifting around the city. He’s the type. Allan, you’ll have to research where Hahn would hang out.”
“Thanks,” Fredriksson said and pinched the top of his nose.
“How will we proceed with John?” Morenius asked.
“We’ll grill the poker guys, check their alibis, and find Dick Lindström, ‘The Lip’ Rosengren, and Mossa,” Haver said. “There isn’t much else to do. Then there’s a thing I’ve been thinking about. Many individuals have asserted that John was planning something big. What could that have been?”
“An aquarium store, I think,” Berglund said. “Pettersson, whom I talked to, said John had alluded to something like that.”
“It wouldn’t necessarily have had to be a store,” Sammy said. “It could have been something big with poker.”
“Have we checked with John’s wife about the poker playing?”
“Beatrice is there right now,” Ottosson said.
They sat in the kitchen, like last time. Justus had lingered outside the doorway but then had gone to his room. The rap music carried all the way to the kitchen.
“I know it’s too loud,” Berit said, more factually than apologetically, “but I don’t have the heart to ask him to turn it down.”
“How has it been going for him?” Beatrice asked.
“He doesn’t say much. He hasn’t been going to school. Mostly he sits in front of the fish tank.”
“Were they close?”
Berit nodded.
“Very,” she said after a while. “They were always together. If there was anyone who could get John to change his mind, it was Justus.”
“How were things financially? You’ve said before there were hard times.”
Berit looked out the window.
“We had a good life,” she said.
“And lately?”
“I know where you’re going with this. You think John was involved in something illicit, but you’re wrong. He was quiet and sometimes unreachable, but he wasn’t stupid.”
“I’m not implying he was. But I’ll get to the point: it seems John won a great deal of money this fall.”
“What do you mean ‘won’? Horse racing?”
“No, a card game. Poker.”
“Well, I know he played cards sometimes, but it was never for high stakes.”
“What about two hundred thousand,” Beatrice said.
“What? That’s not possible.”
Berit’s surprise seemed genuine. She swallowed and stared at Beatrice in bafflement.
“Not only is it possible, it seems almost certain. We have several witnesses.”