Ottosson often appeared absentminded and a little lost. Most likely he would have preferred to be out at his cabin, chopping wood and working in his vegetable garden. Berglund was a reassuring uncle, with a large store of knowledge about the human race and the ability to win people’s trust.
Fredriksson was the nature lover who found it hard to keep up with the increasing tempo and the stress of everyday life. He could also offer up evidence of hostility to foreigners, not in conscious harangues about the superiority of the white race-nothing like that-more like an expression of confusion about the state of things, uncomprehending in the face of the rootless kids with immigrant backgrounds that figured more and more often in their cases. Sammy could become furious when Fredriksson made some sweeping generalization, short arguments that always ended with Fredriksson saying, “That wasn’t what I meant, you know that.”
That’s why we’re good, Lindell thought and pushed the stroller a few more meters. If we were cultured in that lofty way, our jobs would suffer. Maybe that kind of police officer existed in other districts, but in Uppsala, the seat of higher learning, the police were regular people.
Sammy could understand teenagers, not because he was deep-most of the time he wasn’t even particularly methodical or sharp-witted-but because he represented something the kids on the street had been looking for. No flakiness, no meaningless social chatter, just the real thing. They could have used him, and a dozen others like him, full-time on the beat in Gottsunda, Uppsala’s most populated suburb, where the powers that be had taken the inspired step of shutting down the local police branch. “I guess it’s a natural development to increase police visibility by turning us out onto the street,” one colleague had commented at the morning meeting. If only they could place Sammy there, all the vandalism, graffiti, theft, fear, and threats to personal security would fall off drastically.
Lindell smiled. She knew that this self-satisfied argumentation was motivated by a desire to justify her current independent police venture. She tried to convince herself that her colleagues would have done the same thing in her stead.
But of course that wasn’t true. Her independent investigating was not consistent with good ethics. Ottosson would be deeply concerned about her actions and most of her colleagues would shake their heads. But what should she have done? Lennart wanted to talk to her, and her alone, and wasn’t it therefore her duty as a citizen to talk to him? And once she had talked to Lennart, what was the difference in talking with Berit?
Lindell didn’t know what she thought about Berit. It was possible that she was concealing something behind the surprised expression in her beautiful but harrowed face. Information she would keep from the police, however intimate the girl talk became. Her priority was to protect her son, then John’s memory, two sides of the same coin. Did she know where John had stashed the poker winnings? Had she had an affair with another man? Was there jealousy as well as money at the root of the murderer’s motive? Lindell had trouble imagining Berit cooperating in the murder, or even that a rejected lover lay behind the murder. Lindell believed in Berit’s fidelity. She wanted to believe in it and she toyed with the idea that they would have occasion to chat again in the future. Berit seemed wise, had a direct way of talking and probably also a good sense of humor.
Lindell folded up the stroller and lifted it into the trunk of the car. Erik woke up when she strapped him into the car seat. He looked at her with his big eyes, and she stroked him gently on the cheek.
Thirty
He knew that in some way John’s death had something to do with him. It could not be mere coincidence that two tormentors had been punished. Justice was being served.
Vincent had only vague memories from his first five, six years of school, during which time he had managed pretty well. The problems had started in middle school. He didn’t know why he had started to feel like an outsider, but it often had physical manifestations. His classmates avoided touching him. He was left out of the boys’ jostling, often gravitating to the girls, but too odd to be accepted fully. After seventh grade his classmates left their childish games behind, the games where boys and girls could play together, in favor of trying out their new gender identities. And then Vincent stood out even more. He was neither cute nor charming, only silent, something the girls often appreciated in contrast to the other boys’ loud and noisy behavior, but in the long run he became more and more isolated.
He had tried to approach Gunilla. They sometimes met on their way to school. They weren’t friends but Vincent felt comfortable with her, she was someone he could talk to. Their paths diverged once they reached school. She increased her stride as soon as they rounded the corner by Tripolis and the iron fence of the school yard appeared.
One recess he finally told her about his father, about how his father beat him. The trigger had been a bruise on his neck, below his left ear. Someone said it was a hickey. Most of the others ignored him, but Gunilla had walked over and looked at him, not with the teasing, taunting attention he usually attracted but with genuine interest. She had placed her fingers carefully on the blue-red mark. A light touch, lasting a second.
That was when he said it.
“My dad hits me.”
She had pulled her hand back and looked at him with frightened eyes. For a moment he thought he saw something else, but then her expression changed.
“Vincent gets spanked!” she had shouted in the corridors before they gathered to file into the classroom. Everyone had looked at him.
“Vincent’s a bad boy!”
“Do you wet your bed?” one of the boys asked.
“Poor Vincent gets spanked on his bottom!”
Gunilla had been smirking, then the teacher had opened the door to the classroom. Vincent recalled they had learned about amoebas that day.
With John it had been different. He was in a different homeroom, but they had a few classes together. It had started in home economics. Neither John nor Vincent said much in this class, and the teachers had to work to get either one to say or try anything. They had been paired one day when the class was learning to bake pound cake. They had followed the instructions uncertainly and mixed the ingredients together. Unfortunately Vincent managed to tip the bowl when they were adding the flour and both boys had watched paralyzed while the gray-white mixture flowed out toward the edge of the table and down onto the floor.
The teacher rushed over and for some reason assumed that John was the one who had caused the accident. Neither boy said anything, least of all Vincent, who assumed he would be beaten for it.
John was assigned to clean it up, Vincent was sent over to work with another group. From that day John had hated Vincent. With his quiet diplomacy he had steered the class to outright bullying. Vincent’s status changed from awkward outsider to outright victim. After that the machine was in full swing. Once he had complained to the teacher, but that only escalated the terrorism. He knew that John was behind it, although they never talked to each other and John was never an active participant in the persecutions.
Now he was dead and Vincent was pleased. Gunilla was not dead, but she had been severely frightened and she wouldn’t be likely to forget him. The fear would stay with her.