The Princess of Burundi - Kjell Eriksson [10]
“It must have been a while.”
“On the contrary. Lennart Albert Jonsson was charged with larceny with aggravating circumstances as recently as last spring.”
“Any consequences?”
“The charges were dropped,” Fredriksson said. “The witnesses backed down.”
“Under threat?”
“I assume so.”
“I guess we’ll have to take a look at this brother.”
“The remarkable thing is that John managed to stay out of trouble for as many years as he did,” Fredriksson said.
He stood up and leaned against a filing cabinet and looked unusually relaxed, as if a murder case were just what he needed before Christmas.
“I assume you know he’s married. I’ve met the wife. A real looker. They have a boy, Justus.”
“How the hell do you remember all these things?”
“There was something I liked about that family. Little John’s wife was something else. A real dame, no doubt about it. Attractive, of course, but not just that. There was something more there.”
Haver waited for him to continue, for an elaboration of the “something more,” but Fredriksson seemed to have moved on.
“So looker and dame are synonyms?”
“Guess so,” Fredriksson said, smiling.
“Bea is over there right now,” said Haver.
He was happy to have gotten out of it, even though he should have been there. The first meeting with close family members could yield important information.
He remembered the wife of a suicide they had handled. The man had blown himself up behind a barn in the Hagby area, and when Haver and a female colleague, Mia Rosén, had knocked on the door of the newly widowed woman’s house in order to relay the sad news, she had started to laugh. She laughed nonstop for at least half a minute, until Rosén shook her. The woman managed to regain a modicum of control over herself and mumbled something of an apology but could not conceal her pleasure over her husband’s death.
It turned out that the man had been severely intoxicated with a blood alcohol level so high that they could not rule out the possibility that someone else had strapped the explosives to his body. There were car tire tracks on a thin and muddy tractor trail behind the barn. A car had pulled up to and then reversed away from the location, most likely a blue car, which they had determined from collision damage to a young pine tree by the side of the road.
When they questioned the woman a few days later there was a man in the house. He owned a red Audi.
Fredriksson interrupted Haver’s thought process.
“Who kills with a knife?” he asked, picking up on Haver’s earlier thoughts about Little John.
“A drunk involved in a fistfight that escalates into murder or gang violence.”
“Or a calculating bastard who doesn’t want to make a lot of noise,” Fredriksson said.
“He was slashed and tortured before he was killed.”
“What do we make of the fingers?”
“Blackmail was the first thing I thought of,” Haver said. “I know, I watch too much TV,” he said when he met Fredriksson’s gaze.
“I think Little John may have had some information that was very valuable to someone else,” he continued and rolled his chair out from under the table.
“John was a quiet, stubborn kind of guy,” Fredriksson said.
He took a few steps toward the window but turned quickly and looked at Haver.
“Heard anything from Ann?”
“A few weeks ago. She sends her regards.”
“From a few weeks ago, thank you. You’re quite the messenger. How is she?”
“Being a stay-at-home mom isn’t really her thing.”
“How about the kid?”
“He’s fine, I think. We talked about work mainly. I think Ann was involved in charging Little John’s brother once.”
Fredriksson left Haver, who was still thinking about John’s wife. He was curious to hear what Bea had to report. If he knew her, Bea would take her time in getting back to the office. She had the best touch in handling families, friendly without being intrusive or overly emotional, thorough without being finicky. She could take a long time in building up the necessary trust, but consequently often uncovered information that her colleagues missed.
Haver called Ryde on his cell phone. As he had expected, the