The Princess of Burundi - Kjell Eriksson [103]
“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.
“The questioning of the poker players should be regarded as finished,” Bea said. “‘The Lip’ was admitted to a rehab in November and he seems to have stayed put since then. Now Dick Lindström is the only one left. We’ve asked the Dutch authorities for help in locating him. There’s really nothing that binds any one of them to John. Everyone has an alibi for the evening John disappeared, even if these were difficult to extract in some cases.”
“It could have been a hired killer,” Fritzén said. “Murder by mail.”
“It’s possible,” Bea agreed, “but we have nothing to indicate anything like that right now.”
“Okay,” Ottosson said. “We’ll see what Vincent Hahn has to say. We have no problems placing him with Gunilla in Sävja and Vivan in Johannesbäck. It remains to see what he has to say about Little John.”
Thirty-two
“Justice has been served,” Vincent Hahn said in a clear voice.
His firmness surprised Beatrice. She had expected the hesitant speech of a confused mind.