This is absurd, Haver thought.
“Torture,” he said. “Torture is what it is.”
“He was a tough bastard,” Ottosson said. “I don’t think he was an easy one to break.”
“You can’t predict that about someone,” Fredriksson said and had his eighth cookie. “It’s one thing to sound tough from behind a desk when you’re being questioned about a theft, it’s quite another to keep a stiff upper lip when you’re being tortured to death.”
Ottosson wasn’t one to belabor a point, but this time he defended his statement.
“Little John was stubborn and brave. He never gave in even though he was small.”
“But surely you never tortured him?” Riis said.
Ottosson had told them that he had questioned Little John on several occasions. He had been there when John had been brought in the first time at the age of sixteen and he had seen him from time to time during the following five or six years.
“Do we think this is part of some old business or something new?” Ottosson continued. “For my part, I have trouble believing that John would have gotten himself mixed up in something new. You’ve met his wife and kid, Bea, and John seemed to have been getting along well, at least these past ten years. Why would he jeopardize all that now?”
Bea nodded and indicated that Ottosson should keep going. She liked hearing what he had to say. He had a long history that stretched out before she had joined the force or even started school. He was a wise man. He hardly ever lectured them in overly long harangues, and just now she wanted him to keep talking, but he stopped and snatched Fredriksson’s last gingerbread cookie, giving Beatrice a mischievous look.
“His wife seems all right and the boy too. That is to say, he’s been unemployed for a while and that probably caused a few problems but hadn’t led to anything serious. Some partying from time to time, his wife said, but no serious drinking. She may have been putting a good face on things but I think he was keeping to the straight and narrow. He spent a lot of time on his fish tank-it’s the biggest I’ve seen. Four meters by one meter, at least. It takes up a whole wall.”
“Talk about water damage if that thing started to leak,” Riis said.
Ottosson shot him a look as if to say, Enough of your stupid comments. Riis gave him a wry smile.
“It seems to have been his main interest,” Beatrice said. “He belonged to a tropical fish society, was active on the board, and had dreams of owning his own tropical fish store one day.”
Ottosson nodded.
“What about the brother?” Haver asked. “He doesn’t seem completely aboveboard. Could he have gotten John involved in something?”
“I don’t think so,” Beatrice said. “Not consciously anyway. Lennart seemed genuinely surprised. Of course you would be shocked if your brother was murdered, but there isn’t anything that indicates he even sensed that John had been pulled into any kind of trouble.”
“He didn’t look too bright,” Ottosson said. “Do you think he was simply unaware of something he had caused, that it would have these kinds of consequences?”
Beatrice looked doubtful.
“Maybe he’s just putting two and two together now,” Ottosson said.
Morenius, who was the head of KUT, the criminal information service, walked into the room. He threw a sizable folder on the table, sat down, and sighed heavily.
“Sorry I’m late but there’s a lot going on right now.” He underscored this with a new sigh.
“Have some coffee,” Ottosson said. “It’ll pick you up.”
Morenius laughed and reached for the insulated coffee jug.
“Cookies?” Ottosson said.
“Lennart Jonsson is a steady client with us and several other departments,” Morenius started. “He has fourteen counts of traffic violations, three counts of drunk driving, sixteen counts of theft-three of which with aggravated circumstances-one count of assault and probably twenty others unknown to us, one attempted swindle, one count of drug possession, but now it’s too far back in time, three counts of unlawful threats and disturbance in court proceedings. The list goes on. In addition, he has ten financial penalties and a debt of thirty thousand. He receives social welfare and has filed a claim for early retirement.”
“What the hell for?” Lundin broke in.
Morenius looked exhausted after reciting his lengthy list but took a sip of coffee and continued.
“Apparently he has an old injury,” he said. “He fell from some scaffolding about five years ago and has basically been unable to work since then.”
“But he has worked?”
“Mostly construction, but even for Ragnsell’s and as a bouncer for a short time. There have been periods where he’s lived a pretty normal life.”
“Is Lennart our key to the whole thing?”
Ottosson’s question hung in the air. Fredriksson helped himself to a new heap of cookies and kept chewing. Riis looked bored. Lundin looked down at his hands, and everyone expected him to get up and go to the bathroom to wash them. His germophobia was a running joke. The need for paper towels had risen considerably since Lundin had started working.
Haver started to talk about his mapping of the Jonsson family’s circle of friends and acquaintances.
Beatrice listened at first but then her thoughts returned to her visit with Berit Jonsson. She tried to catch hold of something that had nagged at her then, something that came up when they were talking about her son. Was it something Berit had said? A look, or a change of expression? A kind of concern?
Ottosson interrupted her train of thought.
“Hold on, Bea. I just asked you a question. Did Berit say anything about John’s finances? Did the family have a hard time after he lost his job?”
“Not that I know of. It didn’t look as if they were suffering unduly. Berit works part-time as an in-home attendant for social services, and John probably got his unemployment benefit.”
“We’ll run the routine checks,” Ottosson said. “Can you handle that, Riis?”
Riis nodded. It was the kind of assignment that appealed to him.
“I’m planning to go back there tomorrow, talk to Berit and the boy, and search John’s belongings,” Beatrice said. “Does that sound okay?”
“Sounds fine,” Haver said. “Checking the pet stores didn’t give us anything, but we’ll keep at it. There must be other stores with some of this equipment, or people selling it out of their homes. Someone will have to check the tropical fish societies. We need to determine all of John’s activities that day.”
Ottosson ended with some general remarks that no one paid any attention to, though they all waited politely until he was done. Framing these meetings in the right way was important to Ottosson. He wanted them to have a cozy, personable feel.
It was quarter past eight in the evening. The assignment tasks were complete.
Seven
Mikael Andersson phoned the police at ten thirty. The call center-that is to say Fredriksson, since everyone else was in Eriksberg dealing with an assault-handled the matter.
Fredriksson had been enjoying his evening in the office. It was nice and quiet, and he finally had time to sort through some papers. He employed a to-him-brilliant system of eight piles, the largest of which was destined for that most comprehensive of archives: the wastebasket. He thought about how the advent of computers had triggered all that talk of the paperless office. Well, that certainly hadn’t become a reality at the Uppsala police station.
Not that he had anything against paper. His inner bureaucrat reveled in the folders, ledgers, and binders. Most of his colleagues, especially the younger ones, stored a lot of information on the computer. But not Fredriksson. He wanted to have rustling papers and binders to leaf through. The hole punch and stapler occupied a central place on his desk.