The Princess of Burundi - Kjell Eriksson [16]
“Cookies?” Ottosson said.
“Lennart Jonsson is a steady client with us and several other departments,” Morenius started. “He has fourteen counts of traffic violations, three counts of drunk driving, sixteen counts of theft—three of which with aggravated circumstances—one count of assault and probably twenty others unknown to us, one attempted swindle, one count of drug possession, but now it’s too far back in time, three counts of unlawful threats and disturbance in court proceedings. The list goes on. In addition, he has ten financial penalties and a debt of thirty thousand. He receives social welfare and has filed a claim for early retirement.”
“What the hell for?” Lundin broke in.
Morenius looked exhausted after reciting his lengthy list but took a sip of coffee and continued.
“Apparently he has an old injury,” he said. “He fell from some scaffolding about five years ago and has basically been unable to work since then.”
“But he has worked?”
“Mostly construction, but even for Ragnsell’s and as a bouncer for a short time. There have been periods where he’s lived a pretty normal life.”
“Is Lennart our key to the whole thing?”
Ottosson’s question hung in the air. Fredriksson helped himself to a new heap of cookies and kept chewing. Riis looked bored. Lundin looked down at his hands, and everyone expected him to get up and go to the bathroom to wash them. His germophobia was a running joke. The need for paper towels had risen considerably since Lundin had started working.
Haver started to talk about his mapping of the Jonsson family’s circle of friends and acquaintances.
Beatrice listened at first but then her thoughts returned to her visit with Berit Jonsson. She tried to catch hold of something that had nagged at her then, something that came up when they were talking about her son. Was it something Berit had said? A look, or a change of expression? A kind of concern?
Ottosson interrupted her train of thought.
“Hold on, Bea. I just asked you a question. Did Berit say anything about John’s finances? Did the family have a hard time after he lost his job?”
“Not that I know of. It didn’t look as if they were suffering unduly. Berit works part-time as an in-home attendant for social services, and John probably got his unemployment benefit.”
“We’ll run the routine checks,” Ottosson said. “Can you handle that, Riis?”
Riis nodded. It was the kind of assignment that appealed to him.
“I’m planning to go back there tomorrow, talk to Berit and the boy, and search John’s belongings,” Beatrice said. “Does that sound okay?”
“Sounds fine,” Haver said. “Checking the pet stores didn’t give us anything, but we’ll keep at it. There must be other stores with some of this equipment, or people selling it out of their homes. Someone will have to check the tropical fish societies. We need to determine all of John’s activities that day.”
Ottosson ended with some general remarks that no one paid any attention to, though they all waited politely until he was done. Framing these meetings in the right way was important to Ottosson. He wanted them to have a cozy, personable feel.
It was quarter past eight in the evening. The assignment tasks were complete.
Seven
Mikael Andersson phoned the police at ten thirty. The call center—that is to say Fredriksson, since everyone else was in Eriksberg dealing with an assault—handled the matter.
Fredriksson had been enjoying his evening in the office. It was nice and quiet, and he finally had time to sort through some papers. He employed a to-him-brilliant system of eight piles, the largest of which was destined for that most comprehensive of archives: the wastebasket. He thought about how the advent of computers had triggered all that talk of the paperless office. Well, that certainly hadn’t become a reality at the Uppsala police station.
Not that he had anything against paper. His inner bureaucrat reveled in the folders, ledgers, and binders. Most of his colleagues, especially the younger ones, stored a lot of information on the computer. But not Fredriksson. He wanted to have rustling