The Princess of Burundi - Kjell Eriksson [124]
Karjalainen returned to the phone. Lindell was allowed to come by, he reported, but she was not allowed to call Berit.
“I promise,” she said.
Karjalainen lived twenty minutes away, if the shortcut through the forest was passable. She had taken that road with Edvard a few times. It was in those forests that they had made some of their best mushroom finds.
As she was walking to Haver’s car she dialed Berit’s number. She imagined her anxiously pacing around the apartment.
“We’ve found him,” Lindell said right away.
Berit started to cry and Lindell had to wait before she could speak again.
“It will be a while before he comes home,” Lindell said, “but he’s in good hands, I promise.”
Thirty-nine
Ruben Sagander kicked at a piece of sheet metal hard enough to send it flying. Lucky the old man is dead, he thought. He tried to keep himself calm by breathing in through his nose, filling his lungs and chest. Most of all he wanted to scream out his rage over the remains of the building in front of him.
Built in 1951, burned to the ground fifty years later. The sign with the text SAGANDER’S MECHANICAL WORKSHOP lay on the ground, still visible. One of the legs of a mobile crane used to fight the blaze had been positioned over it so that only the letters SAGA were visible.
Fury, as black as the soot on the only remaining wall, coursed through his body. He had talked briefly to one of the firefighters, telling him who he was and that he and his brother had started working in the shop for their father during the fifties. The firefighter had taken his anger for grief and tried to console him. It was clear that someone was responsible for starting the blaze. A full forensic investigation would be launched into the matter but the police had already found traces in the remains that indicated arson. It appeared that someone had systematically poured out flammable liquids in the building and then set it on fire.
“Who?” Ruben asked.
“The police will have to look into it,” the firefighter said.
Now the very last stage of the fire operation remained. Ruben spotted the safe under a few collapsed beams. There was no money in it. Six months ago there had been almost a half a million there. His money. Agne knew it was black money from Ruben’s entrepreneurial firm and had wavered when Ruben asked him to keep the money in the safe.
Someone had subsequently emptied the safe of the money and it was someone who knew the code. Ruben had never thought for a moment that it was Agne. Together they had tried to figure out who it was. They hadn’t told any of the guys in the shop about the theft or noticed anything unusual in their behavior. They had returned from their vacation and started work as usual.
Their suspicions had fallen on John almost immediately. When Mattzon had mentioned in passing that he had seen John outside the shop one Sunday in August, they had been convinced. John was the one who had stolen Ruben’s hard-earned money. A half million that was supposed to fix up the house in Spain where he and Maj-Britt were planning to retire.
Ruben’s phone rang and he checked the caller ID, but didn’t answer. He didn’t have the energy to talk to his brother again. Instead he sat in the car and wondered what to do next. Half a million gone and the shop in ruins. He wanted to flee. Even from Maj-Britt.
He felt no remorse for John’s fate. He was a thief and he had admitted as much, laughing Ruben right in the face. “Try to prove it,” John had said and laughed even more. What he regretted was having gone about it with so much vehemence. He should have let John go, watched him, maybe threaten to hurt his son, and in one way or another forced John to give back the money. Now it was too late. There was only one avenue of recourse and that was confronting Berit. She would no doubt deny knowing anything about the theft, but he could still use the threat against