The Princess of Burundi - Kjell Eriksson [29]
They did not currently receive any housing assistance. The mortgage payment on their condo was reasonable, in Riis’s opinion. There were no incidents recorded with the local housing authorities or from their neighbors.
They only had one credit card, an IKEA card with a balance of around seven thousand kronor. Neither Berit nor John had any private retirement savings or shares or other assets. John had an account with the Förenings-sparbanken, where his unemployment benefit was deposited. Berit received her salary in a private account at Nordbanken. She grossed approximately twelve thousand a month.
John had only one small life-insurance policy, through the trade union, and it was probably not worth very much, according to Riis, who concluded his report with a sigh.
“No excesses and worsening finances the past two years, in other words,” Haver summarized.
“There was one more thing,” Riis said. “In October, John received a deposit into his account of ten thousand kronor. It was an electronic deposit that I have not been able to follow up on yet. I’ll do so later this morning,” Riis added in a for-him unusually defensive tone, as if he was expecting to be criticized for not having all the facts at his disposal.
Haver considered the information; it was clearly the most interesting thing to have come to light so far.
“Ten thousand,” he said, looking like he was thinking about what he would do with ten thousand kronor. “We can only speculate at this point as to where it came from, but it sounds a little fishy.”
Fredriksson coughed slightly.
“Yes,” said Haver, who knew him well.
“We now know what John did late yesterday afternoon,” Fredriksson said casually. “He was stocking up on booze at the liqour store and then he dropped in on a friend, Mikael Andersson, who lives on Väderkvarnsgatan. He called last night and is coming to the station in half an hour.”
“What time was John there?”
“He dropped in around five and stayed for half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes.” Fredriksson went through the rest of Mikael Andersson’s account.
“Okay,” Haver said. “Now we can start tracing him. Mikael Andersson lives on Väderkvarnsgatan, which is a block or so from the main square. How would he get home?”
“Bus,” Bea said. “You don’t walk all the way up to Gränby when you have two big bags of bottles. I wouldn’t, at any rate.”
“I think the number three goes from Vaksalagatan,” said Lundin, whose contributions at morning meetings were getting increasingly sporadic. Haver sensed that his increasing germophobia and obsession with cleanliness were to blame.
“We’ll have to check in with the appropriate bus drivers,” Haver said.
“Maybe we should post a guy at the bus stop at around the time we think John took the bus and have him show people a picture of John and…”
“Good idea,” Haver said. “A lot of people take the same bus on a regular basis. Lundin?”
Lundin looked up with surprise.
“That time of day is tricky for me,” he said.
“I’ll do it,” Berglund said and gave Haver a dark look. He hated seeing Lundin’s pained and confused expressions.
“The brother—that’s where we should plunge the knife, isn’t it?” said Sammy, who had been quiet until now. He sat at the opposite end of the table, so Haver hadn’t even noticed him.
Ottosson drummed his fingers on the table.
“He is a bottom-feeder,” he said. “A particularly nasty bottom-feeder.”
In Ottosson’s world there were “decent people” and “bottom-feeders.” The latter had lost some of its force since so many bottom-feeders swam around the city. Many in schools, as Sammy pointed out repeatedly through his work on street violence.
Beatrice thought of John’s hobby and imagined his brother, Lennart, swimming around in the fish tank as a “particularly nasty bottom-feeder.”
“Me and Ann were the last ones to take him in,” Sammy said. “I wouldn’t have anything against reeling in this particular barracuda.”
Enough with the metaphors, Haver thought.
“We’ll have him in for questioning. It sounds reasonable to let you do the first