The Princess of Burundi - Kjell Eriksson [38]
Thirteen
Mikael Andersson sat down in the visitor’s chair. Fredriksson gathered a few folders together into a pile.
“I’m glad you could stop by,” he said.
“Of course,” Mikael said.
“You may be the last person to have seen Little John alive,” Fredriksson began.
“Except the killer.”
“Except the killer, yes. Had you known him long?”
“My whole life. We grew up in the same neighborhood, went to school together, and hung out after that.”
“Why did you continue to associate with him?”
“He was my friend,” Mikael said and looked at Fredriksson.
“Did you get along well?”
Mikael nodded. Fredriksson thought that the man in front of him in no way corresponded to the image he had formed of him when they talked on the phone. Mikael Andersson was short, only around 165 centimeters Fredriksson guessed, and solidly built, fat actually. Fredriksson knew he installed metal roofing but had trouble imagining him moving around on a rooftop.
“What did you do together?”
“We’d get together, bet on horses, play a little bandy sometimes.”
“Sirius isn’t up to much these days,” Fredriksson said.
“Right. What else do you want to know?”
“You must know Berit and Lennart.”
“Sure.”
“So, tell me about them.”
“Lennart is a whole chapter, but you must know all about him. Berit’s a brick. They’ve always been together.”
Micke leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and interlaced his fingers before he continued. Fredriksson noted the changes in his face as a wave of red washed over the pugdy cheeks and throat.
“She’s all right,” he said. “It won’t be easy for her now that John’s gone. And the kid too. I don’t get it. He seemed the same as always. Have you got any leads?”
“Nothing too promising,” Fredriksson admitted.
“I think he was picked up by someone who later killed him. I just don’t know who that would be.”
“Someone offered him a ride?”
“But who would that be?”
“You can’t think of anyone who had an ax to grind with John?”
“No, nothing that would have made them want to kill him. John knew how to toe the line.”
“How was he doing financially?”
“He wasn’t rolling in money, but they managed. Things got worse after he stopped working for Sagge.”
“Why did he stop?”
“There wasn’t enough work, they said.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“Sagge and his wife. She’s the one who calls the shots.”
Fredriksson pinched his nose.
“Someone picked him up, you said. Did John have any business out in Libro? Was there some company out there he needed to visit, or a friend?”
“Not that I know of. He didn’t have too many friends.”
“Did you ever see John with drugs?”
Mikael Andersson shot a quick glance at Fredriksson. He inhaled deeply and breathed out through his nose. Fredriksson had the impression that Micke was trying to decide whether or not to tell the truth.
“A long time ago, maybe. But that was all over and done with.”
“How long ago are we talking about?”
Micke made a gesture as if to say: God only knows, it must have been years ago.
“When we were young,” he said finally. “Twenty years ago.”
“He never mentioned drugs after that?”
“Talk is one thing, but I never saw John with any drugs the past few years.”
Fredriksson leaned back, put his hands behind his head, and looked at him. The police officer’s face revealed nothing. He sat there for half a minute, then slowly put his hands back down, leaned back over the desk, and wrote a few lines in his notebook.
“Tell me about John,” he said. “What kind of person was he?”
“He was quiet, just like his dad. His dad stuttered badly, but not John. He was a good friend. He didn’t have a lot of friends at school. It was just me and a couple of other guys. He’d always been interested in fish. I don’t know where that came from. Maybe it was his uncle, Eugene, who started the whole thing. We used to go fishing with him. He had a cabin out towards Faringe.”
Mikael paused. Fredriksson sensed that he was trying to go back ten, twenty years in time.
“He was happy there, in the dinghy,” he continued. “It was a little lake. A cold