The Princess of Burundi - Kjell Eriksson [130]
One flight of stairs left and in his mind he saw the damaged sign to the shop and recalled the sign of the first one they had erected in the shop. Sagander paused. A door opened on the floor below and he heard the sound of footsteps going down.
“Take the boxes with you too!” a woman shouted. The footsteps stopped. A man muttered something and returned to the apartment. There was a brief exchange and then the footsteps went down again. Ruben Sagander stood completely still and was relieved that the man hadn’t turned on the light either. The front door opened. Sagander waited and fingered the knife in the pocket of his hunting jacket. A few minutes later the man returned, tiptoed up the stairs, a door opened, music streamed out, and the door closed again. Sagander breathed again and kept going.
Outside Berit’s door he stopped and took out a hood. He drew the knife from its sheath and cut two slits in the fabric, pulled the hood over his head, and felt the door handle. The door was unlocked.
Berit was sitting at the kitchen table staring blankly at the carton of bills in front of her. Thousands of kronor. She had never even seen this much money before. She stuck her hand down and put a bunch of five-hundred-kronor notes on the table. Suddenly she started to cry.
“Why, John?” she sniffed and pushed some notes off the table.
Mechanically she started to count, putting twenty five-hundred-kronor notes in each pile. Anger overcame her when she had counted to fifty thousand. He had let her down. God, how she had scrimped and saved all fall, worrying about their finances and their future. She had even wondered if they would be forced to sell the apartment and start renting. This while John had been sitting on hundreds of thousands of kronor the whole time. Justus had clearly taken some money too. He had also known. John and the boy had been planning something together. A double betrayal.
There was a sound from the hall. She reached out and turned down the volume on the radio.
“Justus,” she called out. “Is that you?”
Lennart watched the man looking up at Berit’s windows. The yard was badly lighted and in the heavy snowfall it was hard to pick out any detail, but the figure looked familiar. Could it be Dick Lindström? He wasn’t quite as large, but winter clothes could be misleading. Was he back from Holland and horny as a tomcat? Lennart swore under his breath. I’ll fucking catch you in the act, he thought. He’s got some nerve showing his face around here. And Justus, the poor bastard, has to stand by and watch his mother being mounted by a scumbag with buck teeth a week after his father has died.
Lennart drew closer to the entrance but pulled back after he caught sight of a man carrying garbage bags and a large box. He walked toward the garbage shed where Lennart was hiding. He heard the man come closer, how he mumbled something, cleared his throat, and spat into the snow.
He threw open the door to the garbage shed and Lennart more saw than smelled the stink waft out into the winter night. The man shut the door, cleared his throat again, and walked back to the apartment building. Lennart waited a minute or so before following him.
Ruben Sagander stared transfixed at the money in front of him. Piles of money were laid out on the floor and table. His money. He had been right. He gave a harsh laugh.
Berit automatically drew the money toward her as she stared at the masked man. She started putting the money back into the box.
“Don’t touch me!” she said and looked around for something to defend herself with.
The man laughed again, bent down, and picked up a note. Berit lunged for a bread