“Now we can start to imagine how Berit Jonsson feels,” he said, and at least Fritzén was taken aback at these words, but Ottosson continued calmly.
“Death comes to us all, that is the only thing we can be certain of. It makes no difference whether it is a thief in a garbage dump or a policeman in the line of duty. When someone dies at the hands of another, the pain for the survivors is the same.”
Haver wondered about Ottosson’s relationship to Little John. He did not mention Vivan Molin, who had been strangled and brutally kicked in under her bed.
“It’s true,” Berglund interrupted, and all eyes turned to him, surprised because he rarely said anything at the meetings. “We have to do better. All of us. No one should have to die like Jan-Erik, Vivan Molin, or Little John, there we can agree. We need to be part of the solution because we are part of the problem.”
His words fell like heavy blows. Ottosson raised his eyebrows and Fritzén looked disgusted.
“What do you mean?” Fritzén said. “I don’t think this is the right time to air your homespun theories about the burden of guilt and the inadequacies of our society.”
“It’s always the right time,” said Berglund, now in a calmer tone of voice. “It’s our job and our responsibility to continue asking ourselves the question of what we could have done to prevent this.”
Fritzén moved as if to interrupt him again, but Lundin jumped in with a cough.
“I want to hear what Berglund has to say,” he said.
“I went up to see Oskar Pettersson on Marielundsgatan again. He knew Little John and his parents. He’s a wise old man,” Berglund said, looking at Fritzén. “We speak the same language. Most of you aren’t from around here, even if these things are the same all over Sweden, but you are also all too young. There is a kind of culturedness that exists apart from the kind transmitted by schools and universities, and Oskar Pettersson represents this educated culture. Once upon a time I think this kind of culture flourished in the neighborhood where Little John grew up, and it helped to stem the flow of today’s lawlessness. Of course, there were scum in the fifties and sixties, but there was also a social resistance that is lacking today.”
“What kind of resistance?” Sammy asked.
“Something upheld by normal people, but also by the authorities.”
“Sweden isn’t how it was,” Riis agreed. “There’s a lot of new folk now, that’s bound to lead to trouble.”
Berglund turned his head and looked at Riis.
“I know you don’t like immigrants, but both Little John and Vincent Hahn are products of Swedish social democratic policy, our so-called People’s Home. I think it is the isolation of individuals in our country that breaks them. The gap between people’s dreams and the potential to get off track is too large. What was it we once dreamed of, what did Oskar Pettersson dream of?”
The silence was overwhelming. These questions were rarely or never aired. The backdrop was dark, a pool of three thousand milliliters of blood on the street, a dead colleague. Berglund did not feel able to articulate the questions he felt deep inside, what he had experienced as he sat at home with the old concrete worker. There was something about the way Pettersson talked about the old furnace workers at the Ekeby mill. That was why he had started thinking about these things, thoughts strengthened during the walk home. During the last visit Pettersson had remembered even more about Little John and his family. With an endless series of anecdotes Pettersson had described a utopia sunk into the mire. Berglund had spent most of the time listening. There was something about his way of talking that made Berglund widen his speculations beyond the usual sphere of things. The discussion went back and forth in time. Slumbering, undiscovered, and yet familiar connections emerged. Berglund wanted to retain these thoughts, deepen and refine them, but realized his limitations.
“And this doesn’t have anything to do with svartskallar?” Riis said peevishly.
“There’s something in what you say,” Sammy Nilsson said. “I’ve felt the same thing. But I don’t think it’s a question of age or even class.”
“I think we’re getting off track again,” Fritzén said.
“Look here,” Ottosson said, “we have to be able to talk this through. We’re police officers, not hung over army reservists guarding a completely unnecessary stockpile of military goods in the forest.”
Where Ottosson had gotten this image was not clear, but most of them thought it funny. Even Riis smiled.
“Take the kids in Gottsunda or Stenhagen,” Sammy continued. “They’re so lost. I’m starting to doubt my work more and more, maybe I should become a boxing coach or something. Get close to the kids like that UIF guy who does such a great job and has a name no one can spell. That would be better economically too. All the politicians talk about unemployment and segregation but they don’t do anything, they stay in their world.”
“That’s right,” Berglund said. “They don’t live there, they don’t know any immigrants, and they’re afraid. Then they send us out when things get out of hand.”
Fritzén made an effort to get up but ended up sinking back onto his chair.
“This is beginning to sound like a leftist consciousness-raising group from the seventies,” he said.
“So you were involved back then?” Ottosson asked innocently.
“I prefer to wash my hands of all that,” he said, and suddenly an emotional divide appeared in the room that they knew would be hard to bridge. They had all had good experiences working with Fritzén, but now a new factor came into the picture: politics. Not the shallow question of party adherence but the underlying convictions.
“We should talk more about this,” Ottosson said in an attempt to curb the discussion in an elegant way, “but now we have to turn to the matters at hand. I suggest Haver and Beatrice take care of questioning Hahn. He appears to be in bad shape and we probably need to bring in a physician. Can you arrange that, Ola?”
Haver nodded.
“I’ll talk with Liselotte,” Ottosson continued. “We have a press conference tomorrow at nine. She’ll handle that with the boss. I know what you’re thinking but he volunteered to be there. The question now is if Hahn had anything to do with Little John. Personally I find this hard to believe. I think it’s merely a coincidence that they went to school together.”
“He said he knew Little John,” Sammy Nilsson said. “And he knew that John had been stabbed.”
“He could have read it in the paper.”
“Sure, but the way he said it…it was like he was gloating or something.”
“Do we have anything new on the knife they found at the hospital garage?” Ottosson asked, turning to a new detail.
“No, we have been trying to trace where it was bought,” Sammy said. “So far we haven’t determined anything. It probably came from abroad.”
Riis smirked and Sammy looked up but did not allow himself to be provoked. Instead, he continued. “I believe Mattias when he says he stole it from a parked car, from someone who was at the hospital.”
“Isn’t there a construction site next door?” Berglund asked. “If we’re still talking about a pickup.”
“Yes, but those guys have their own parking area.”
Haver made a motion with his hand, almost a reflex, but lowered it immediately. Ottosson, who caught it, looked inquiringly at him.
“No, it was nothing. I just had a kind of flashback,” he said.
“To the hospital?”
“I don’t know. Maybe something about a construction site. You know how these things are.”
He sank back onto the chair, trying to shut out his environment and recapture his train of thought. Hospital, parking garage, construction, pickup, knife, he arranged the words in front of him, but it was only the set images that flashed past, everything that they had already discussed and considered.