“Thanks, Beatrice,” said Ottosson, coughing and looking slightly helpless.
The squad chief was known for his soft heart when faced with human shortcomings, but also of man’s capacity, out of degradation, perhaps impotence and hate, to shake it off, stagger on, and simply get back up. That kind of thing always made him teary-eyed.
Berglund’s afternoon session at “The Grotto,” where he spoke with a dozen of Gränsberg’s “brothers in misfortune,” as he put it, resulted in a similar picture.
“He was a good guy, that’s how you can summarize the whole thing,” said Berglund.
“Hallelujah,” said Riis. “Are we at a Salvation Army meeting? Aren’t there any stains? The guy drank and was a tramp. How did he get money? No thefts or minor assaults, not even shoplifting? He was no angel, was he?”
“Tell about the trailer,” Ottosson encouraged Morgansson. Ottosson was ashamed of Riis, mainly perhaps because Fritzén, the prosecutor, was present.
Morgansson explained that they had found three fingerprints in the job site trailer, besides Gränsberg’s. Two had been identified. Johnny Andersson and Manfred Kvist, two homeless men, had left their prints in a number of places. Both had also admitted that they visited Gränsberg, but could not say when, other than that it was during the past month. Kvist had slept over on one occasion on the floor in the trailer. That was at the end of May.
They had not found anything of great interest, no alcohol or narcotics, and nothing that looked like stolen goods.
Morgansson’s report was brief and concise as usual. Lindell observed him during the presentation and found that he had been getting better and better.
“The third print?” she asked.
“Well,” said the technician with a quick glance at Lindell. “We found it on the cover of a notebook, the ordinary kind with a shiny black cover and lined pages. It looks brand new, the price tag is still on the back, and nothing was written in it.”
“Can it be the sales clerk’s print?”
“Probably not,” Morgansson drawled. “Unless we’re talking door-to-door sale of notebooks, because we found the same print on one of the windowpanes, the one by the table. Or pane, it’s actually plastic. My theory is that the unknown individual was sitting at the table, pushed up the window to get a little fresh air, and then locked it with an adjusting screw. Or maybe simply opened it and threw something out the window, but that doesn’t change the picture. The print is there.”
Morgansson stopped talking and they realized by his expression that he was done.
“Perhaps the man in the car,” said Sammy Nilsson.
Everyone turned toward him.
“I got a tip today. I was rummaging around at the murder scene and ran into two guys doing cable work. As you’ve seen, a cutting runs along the road past the murder scene. This morning there were people there. They were doing some excavation work, cable laying or something. I realized that they must have been there awhile and stopped. To summarize, they had seen a car parked fifty meters from the discovery site, approximately where we parked ours. That was Monday, they were dead sure of it. Tuesday and Wednesday they were at a different job. We found Gränsberg on Tuesday, when he’d been lying there a full day, according to the medical science.”
“What kind of car was it?” Ottosson asked.
“The guys in the cutting said a white one, a little run-down, make unknown.”
“When?”
“After their coffee break at eleven it was just there. Then it disappeared without them noticing it. They were down in the cutting of course and had limited visibility.”
“Anders Brant has a white Corolla,” Sammy Nilsson continued. “Eight years old. It’s in his parking space.”
Ann Lindell looked down at the table. Damn jerk, she mumbled inaudibly, over and over again.
“And he’s still missing?” asked Fritzén, the prosecutor.
“Yep,” said Sammy. “He packed up and left Tuesday morning.”
“We’ll have to go into his apartment,” said Fritzén. “There’s no other alternative. We’ll bring in the car too.”
“Doesn’t he have a cell phone?” asked Fredriksson, who had so far been silent.
“Not turned on,” said Sammy. “I’ve checked the flights on Tuesday. He left home about eight and we know he went to Arlanda, terminal 5, international departures, that is. There are countless conceivable destinations.”
“Check them all,” said Fritzén. “He must be on a passenger list.”
“Madrid,” said Ola Haver. “He went with Spanair to Madrid. The ticket was purchased on the Internet on Friday of last week.”
Ottosson smiled broadly and gave Fritzén a look. For once Sammy Nilsson looked disappointed, not to mention taken by surprise. Beatrice also grinned and made a thumbs up in the direction of Haver, who however did not abandon the poker face he had put on the past week.
“I’ll be damned if it wasn’t that hack who was there and smudged his prints in the shed,” Riis commented.
To him all journalists were rabble.
“You said that Brant came to his residence early Tuesday morning by taxi. Where did he take it from?”
Lindell stared at her colleague and then turned her gaze toward Sammy Nilsson, who seemed to have recovered after Haver’s unexpected initiative as far as Madrid was concerned.
“Vaksala Square,” he said. “According to the taxi driver he was walking along Vaksalagatan and hailed the car.”
Lindell exhaled audibly. Brant had evidently walked some distance from her home, but she realized that her concealment could be discovered at any time. Maybe her phone number was jotted down in an address book in his apartment? Her secret-that she and Brant had been lovers, or whatever other people would call it-would crack the day they checked Brant’s calls from his home phone. Almost certainly he had called her from there. What would she say? That he had called for an interview? That he was an acquaintance of a friend that she got together with now and then? Or should she go see Ottosson and tell him what was going on?
With every minute it was getting harder to be honest, with every second that passed she looked more and more like a liar, and even more important in the eyes of her colleagues, one who was obstructing a murder investigation.
Maybe he’d only called her from his cell phone? She seized that straw, even if it was fragile, and decided to wait and see. If only she could make contact with him first!
On Tuesday evening she phoned Görel, who had no idea where Brant might conceivably be, nor how he could be reached. She had no e-mail address for Brant. When Lindell asked, it turned out that they had met at a salsa class. He was not much of a dancer, Görel thought. Lindell mumbled something and thanked her, and quickly ended the call by blaming Erik.
Is this how they feel, it struck Lindell, the ones who are questioned by us and stick with half-truths and evasions as long as possible? They don’t need to be guilty of anything, but shame or misdirected loyalty makes them stand out as tortuous liars.
The prosecutor decided on a house search, “on weak grounds,” as he himself admitted, but they did not have much to go on. The hope was that they would be able to establish that it was Brant’s prints in the trailer. And the car would be brought in for technical investigation, even if the chance of directly linking it to the crime scene was not that great. For one thing several days had passed, for another the installation workers had not seen the parked car at close range. Besides, the road up to the area where the trailer stood was coarse, crushed gravel. So no one was counting on any certain tire prints, even more so as several police vehicles had used that same access road.
The group discussed further, reinforced by the prosecutor’s decision, how the investigation should otherwise be run. Berglund was eager to continue talking with the homeless at “The Grotto.” Beatrice Andersson’s task was to have yet another conversation with Gunilla Lange and her new husband, Bernt Friberg. Based on that she might possibly question Göran Bergman again. Ola Haver would devote himself to the Madrid lead, and seemed content with that when he got up and left the room. Beatrice looked after him, but when he turned in the doorway it was Lindell’s gaze he sought.