The Princess of Burundi - Kjell Eriksson [127]
Justus was in the kitchen. A woman was at the stove stirring something in a pot. She looked up and smiled. There was a sweet scent in the air. The boy gave her a quick look, then cast down his eyes. On the table in front of him there was a plate and a glass of milk. Lindell sat down across from him. Erki lingered in the doorway for a moment before he also sat down at the table. The woman pulled the pot to one side, turned the heat off, and left the kitchen. Erki followed her with his gaze.
“My sister,” he said.
Lindell nodded and looked at Justus, who met her eyes.
“How is it going?” she asked.
“Fine.”
“I’m glad you’re all right. We’ve been worried about you.”
“I just went out for a while,” Justus said defiantly.
“Your mother didn’t know where you were.”
Lindell found it hard to talk to teenagers. They were neither children nor adults. She always had the feeling that she was pitching her words at the wrong level, either too childish or too advanced. She needed Sammy’s innate ability to reason with them.
Justus scratched the plate with a knife. He looked absentminded but Lindell sensed he was boiling inside.
“Did you hear that Sagander’s workshop burned down?” she asked quietly and leaned closer to him.
He shook his head.
“You know,” Erki said.
Justus looked at him hastily and for a moment Lindell saw the terror in his eyes, as if he was afraid of Erki but conscious of the folly of denying what he had probably just confided to him. Justus nodded.
“Tell me about it,” Lindell said.
Justus began awkwardly, but after a while his words started to flow. He stopped in the middle of a sentence and looked at Lindell.
“Sagge is an idiot,” he said.
“He has only praise for your father.”
“He fired him,” Justus said. “What good is his praise?”
“You have a point there, Justus,” Lindell said with a smile.
When Justus had finished his story he appeared to realize for the first time that the fire had cost Erki his job. The terror returned to his eyes and he sucked in his breath.
“Take it easy,” Erki said, as if he had read the boy’s mind.
“What do you want to do now?” Lindell asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Shouldn’t you call Berit and tell her where you are?”
“Am I going to jail?”
“You’re under fifteen,” Lindell said. “You can’t be tried as an adult. There will be consequences, of course, but we’ll keep in mind that your father has just died and that you’ve been extremely upset.”
“One more thing,” Erki said calmly, and Lindell’s appreciation of him grew even more. “Justus has some money. Do you want me to tell her?”
The boy said nothing. Erki waited, then started to talk.
“He came here by taxi and I wondered where he got the money,” Erki said and stretched his hand out for a backpack leaning against the wall. Lindell sensed what it contained but drew her breath when Erki unzipped it and revealed thick wads of five-hundred-kronor notes.
“How much is it?”
“I don’t know,” Erki said and put the backpack down. “I haven’t counted it, but it must be a couple of thousand.”
“I didn’t take it all,” Justus said almost inaudibly.
“Where did the money come from?” Lindell asked.
“It was Dad’s.”
“From the start?”
“We were planning to go to Africa,” Justus said defiantly. “He had saved it up so we could start a fish farm. Maybe in Burundi.”
“Do you know where the money came from?”
The boy shook his head.
“I know,” Erki said. “It came from the shop.”
“Tell me,” Lindell said.
Erki and Justus looked at each other. Justus’s expression changed. The mixture of aggression and passivity slowly gave way to a gentler expression and Lindell saw that Justus had inherited Little John’s delicate features. The inner defenses gave way. He looked pleadingly at Erki, who took the boy’s hand in his, enveloping it completely. Half a finger was missing from Erki’s hand. Lindell and Erki exchanged a look. Lindell saw that he was touched.
“You may not know this but he was an expert in tropical fish,” Erki said. “We all