Lazarus

by Kepler, Lars

  ‘Have you turned the lights on?’ she asks.

  ‘No.’

  Suddenly Saga is worried that the girls might get inside the house and harm Pellerina for real, hold her down and pick out her eyes with a screwdriver. She knows it’s just her imagination running riot, but at the same time all children need to test their boundaries, and it’s easy for that to get out of hand, it happens everywhere.

  ‘Put the lights on now.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘I’ll be with you as soon as I can – how does that sound?’ Saga says.

  They hang up and Saga calls her dad as she pulls her white leathers over her running clothes. There’s no answer, so she tries again as she hurries downstairs. She leaves a voicemail telling him to call her as soon as he can.

  She looks up the number of the Thoracic Intensive Care Unit at the Karolinska Hospital, but Lars-Erik Bauer isn’t working tonight.

  Saga removes the tarpaulin, puts her helmet on and starts the motorbike.

  While she’s riding to Gamla Enskede she thinks through the last conversation she had with her dad. She can’t imagine how he could have misunderstood her. He wanted to invite the researcher he’d met on line out to dinner, and asked if she could babysit.

  Maybe she misunderstood which day he meant. Perhaps she was distracted and said yes without being aware of it.

  There are white-windowed cars parked in front of all the houses, and the lawns are sparkling with frost.

  Saga stops and opens the wrought-iron gate, rides the heavy motorbike into the drive, switches off the engine, props it up, then goes and closes the gate behind her.

  She takes her helmet off and looks up at the house.

  All the windows are dark.

  The light from a streetlamp further down the road reaches into the garden. The bare branches of the apple tree cast a network of shadows over the brickwork.

  Pellerina’s pink bicycle, with tassels on its handlebars, is lying on the grass with flat tyres.

  Saga walks towards the house with the faint light behind her. She sees her shadow get paler and longer.

  She looks along the curved driveway down to the garage in the basement. There’s a plastic football lying in front of the door.

  She stops at the front door and listens. She can hear a faint thudding sound, like someone running on a treadmill.

  She pushes the door handle down and pulls.

  The front door is unlocked.

  The thudding sound stops the moment she opens the door.

  She looks into the dark hall.

  Complete silence.

  The rug is lying slightly crooked.

  Saga puts her helmet on the stool, takes off her boots and walks in. The worn parquet floor is ice-cold under her feet. She turns the main light on and a yellow glow spreads across the walls.

  ‘Hello? Pellerina?’ Saga calls.

  The house is so cold that her breath clouds in front of her mouth. She passes the passageway and door leading to the basement and sees her dad’s coat hanging over the back of a chair in the kitchen.

  ‘Dad?’

  Saga switches the kitchen light on and sees that the door to the back garden is wide open.

  She walks over to it and calls to Pellerina.

  There are some dull noises from the boiler down in the basement, then silence again.

  Saga looks at the damp glass of the greenhouse, which is reflecting the light from the kitchen. She sees herself standing in the doorway in the form of a black silhouette.

  The bare bushes against the neighbour’s fence are moving in the wind. The swing is creaking gently on its frame.

  Saga gazes out into the garden, at the darkness between the trees, then closes the door.

  The chain email said that the clown girls come at night, grab hold of you, then paint a laughing mouth on your face to make you look happy when they prick out your eyes.

  She goes back to the passageway and stops at the door to the basement. Pellerina never goes down there. All that’s there is the boiler, the washing machine and mangle, and a garage full of garden tools and furniture.

  But Pellerina is scared of the boiler, because on really cold nights the banging noise it makes can be heard throughout the house.

  Saga walks over to the staircase and sees that someone has gone up it with dirty shoes.

  ‘Pellerina?’ she calls upstairs.

  Saga creeps up the stairs, and when her head reaches the level of the landing she stops and looks along the thick floorboards. She sees the grain of the wood, the frayed edges of the rugs, the crack under the door to the bathroom.

  She can hear a very faint voice, but can’t tell where it’s coming from. It sounds like monotonous singing.

  Saga turns back quickly and looks downstairs, puts a hand on one of the steps, kneels down and checks that the door to the basement is closed.

  She carries on up the stairs, walks through the darkness to Pellerina’s room, listens, then carefully opens the door.

  In the gloom she can make out the grey plastic case of the ECG-machine, a pair of pink ballet shoes and the closed wardrobe door.

  Saga goes in and sees that the bed has been used but is now empty. She hears a creaking sound from the attic. The loose cable of the satellite dish is swaying outside the window.

  ‘Pellerina,’ Saga says quietly.

  She switches on the lamp with the heart-shaped shade and the pink glow spreads across the wall behind the chest of drawers, up to the ceiling.

  Saga looks under the bed, and sees some sweet wrappers, a dusty extension lead and a plastic skeleton with red eyes.

  She gets to her feet and goes over to the wardrobe, and puts her hand on the bronze-coloured handle.

  ‘Pellerina, it’s only me,’ she says, opens the door.

  The hinges creak and Saga catches a glimpse of the clothes hanging inside as a large shape sweeps towards her. She throws her head back and her hand reaches automatically for her pistol as the huge teddy bear lands on the floor and sits there on its backside in front of her.

  ‘I very nearly did you a lot of damage,’ Saga says.

  She closes the wardrobe and hears the singing again. The voice is very weak, almost impossible to hear. She turns round slowly, listens and thinks that it seems to be coming from the guest bedroom.

  Saga walks out of the room, past the dark staircase, then nudges open the door of the room where she usually sleeps. Someone’s pulled the bedclothes onto the floor and is sitting under them on the other side of the bed.

  ‘Not here, not here, not here,’ Pellerina is chanting in a high voice.

  ‘Pellerina?’

  ‘Not here, not here …’

  When Saga pulls the covers back her sister lets out a shriek of fear. Her hands are clamped over her ears and she looks terrified.

  ‘It’s me,’ Saga says, taking her into her arms.

  Her sister’s heart is beating fast and her small body is sweaty.

  ‘It’s only me, don’t worry, it’s only me.’

  Pellerina hugs her tightly and whispers her name over and over again.

  ‘Saga, Saga, Saga, Saga …’

  37

  They sit on the bed with their arms wrapped tightly round each other until Pellerina has calmed down, before going downstairs to the kitchen. Her sister stays close to Saga the whole time as she switches on every lamp they pass.

  Saga opens the fridge and finds some leftovers from the previous day’s meal, beef stew and boiled potatoes.

  ‘You’ll have to go to bed as soon as we’ve finished eating,’ Saga says, taking out a carton of cream.

  ‘Daddy was cross and didn’t make any tea,’ Pellerina whispers.

  ‘Why do you keep saying he was cross?’

  ‘I sent a picture of my first painting.’

  ‘From painting class?’

  ‘Yes, and he phoned and said it was a really lovely dog, and that he’d pin it up in the kitchen, but when I told him it was a horse he got cros
s and hung up.’

  ‘What? What did he say?’ she asks.

  Pellerina nudges her glasses further up her nose.

  ‘He just hung up,’ she says.

  ‘There must have been a problem, sometimes the battery runs out, I promise, he wasn’t cross,’ Saga smiles as she starts to heat the food up on the stove.

  ‘Why doesn’t he want to come home, then?’

  ‘That might be my fault, I’d forgotten that Dad was going to meet a girl.’

  ‘Has Daddy got a date?’ Pellerina smiles.

  ‘You know I’m seeing Randy, don’t you?’

  ‘He’s really cute.’

  ‘Yes, he is.’

  As the food warms through Saga makes a sauce. She dissolves a stock cube in cream, then adds some pepper and a teaspoon of soy sauce.

  ‘So what’s Daddy’s girlfriend called?’ Pellerina asks.

  ‘I don’t remember – Annabella, maybe?’ Saga says, picking a name at random.

  ‘Annabella,’ her sister laughs.

  ‘With big brown eyes, dark hair and bright red lipstick.’

  ‘And a sparkly gold dress!’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Saga gets out two plates and glasses, takes out the lingonberry jam, some sheets of kitchen roll and a jug of water.

  ‘He’s probably put his phone on silent so he can kiss Annabella,’ she goes on.

  Pellerina laughs out loud. The colour’s come back to her face now. They sit down and Saga makes sure Pellerina takes her heart medication before they start to eat.

  ‘Didn’t Dad tell you about his date?’ she asks after a while.

  ‘No,’ Pellerina says, and takes a sip of water.

  ‘But he told you I’d be coming tonight?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Pellerina says, eating some of the stew. ‘I don’t think so.’

  When they’ve finished, Saga brushes Pellerina’s teeth, then goes into her bedroom with her.

  ‘I went and hid when I got scared,’ Pellerina says as she puts her nightdress on.

  ‘I’ll give you a little piece of advice,’ Saga says, brushing the hair from her sister’s face. ‘If you really want to hide, you have to stay completely quiet. You can’t say “not here, not here”, because then they’ll know that you’re there.’

  ‘OK,’ her sister nods, and lies back in bed.

  ‘And don’t hide under the blankets,’ Saga goes on. ‘Hide behind the curtains or behind an open door and stand there nice and still until I find you.’

  ‘Because you’re the police.’

  ‘Shall I leave the light on?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But there’s nothing to be scared of – you know that, don’t you?’ Saga says, sitting down beside her.

  ‘Aren’t you ever scared?’ Pellerina asks.

  ‘No, I’m not,’ Saga replies, taking her sister’s glasses off and putting them on the bedside table.

  ‘Goodnight, Saga.’

  ‘Goodnight, little sister,’ she says, just as her phone starts to ring in her pocket.

  ‘Maybe Dad’s had enough of kissing,’ Pellerina smiles.

  Saga takes her phone out and sees that the call is from Jeanette Fleming.

  ‘It isn’t him,’ she says. ‘It’s my work, I need to get this, but I’ll come and see you again in a little while.’

  Leaving the door ajar, Saga takes the call as she walks downstairs.

  ‘Sorry to call so late, but you said you wanted a report after each session,’ Jeanette says.

  ‘How did it go?’ Saga asks.

  ‘I probably need another couple of evenings.’

  ‘Can’t we just tell her to take some time off work?’

  ‘You get better results if you fit in with them, and I’m OK with the late evenings.’

  ‘As long as you don’t wear yourself out,’ Saga says.

  ‘The baby likes it when I work, stays nice and quiet.’

  Jeanette’s divorced, but is finally pregnant after wanting children for years. Saga thinks she went to Denmark to be artificially inseminated like she talked about, but she’s been oddly secretive about how it all happened.

  ‘What’s she said?’

  ‘It might be better if you heard it for yourself, I’ll send the audio, there’s only a few minutes where she’s remembering new things, the rest is all preamble and structure.’

  ‘Great, thanks.’

  Saga hangs up and retrieves the file, opens it, sits down at the kitchen table and looks out at the old apple trees in the light of the window as the recording begins in the middle of a sentence:

  ‘… and that too. No, it isn’t mine, it’s—’

  Anna knocks something over and swears.

  ‘Fuck.’

  Chair legs scrape the floor, then footsteps and the sound of a tap running. Jeanette is a long way from the microphone, her voice is barely audible.

  ‘Shall we go back to what you said before, about him saying he was going to buy a research centre in Bulgaria?’

  ‘He said all sorts of things,’ Anna replies, breathing heavily.

  ‘But you remember the bit about the old laboratory in Bulgaria? Did you understand what he wanted it for?’

  ‘No idea, he seemed interested in the chemical industry – how the hell could anyone be interested in that? He talked about a company in Norrtälje as well, one that makes … what’s it called, the stuff that makes cars shiny?’

  ‘Polish?’ Jeanette suggests, sitting back down at the table.

  ‘No, wax.’

  ‘Car wax?’

  ‘Yes, they make something that’s in car wax … He was talking about buying a majority of shares in the company.’

  ‘Did he work there?’

  ‘No, but he was hanging about down there at the time.’

  ‘In Norrtälje?’

  ‘He took the ferry from Solö,’ she replies.

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘But he took the ferry to get home?’

  ‘That’s how I understood it, but he …’

  Anna falls silent when the doorbell rings, mutters that it’s Fredrika, and leaves the kitchen.

  Saga sits in silence for a while before she gets up and starts to clear the table. She rinses the plates and cutlery, sets the dishwasher going, then heads back upstairs to check on her sister.

  Saga walks round the house, turning out the lights and making sure the doors are locked and the windows closed before she goes to the guest bedroom.

  She picks up the bedclothes from the floor, makes the bed, then tries to call her dad again.

  It’s strange that he hasn’t been in touch, even if he is on a date, she thinks.

  His phone must be broken, unless he’s lost it.

  If he’d had an accident, she’d have heard by now.

  Saga turns the bedside lamp off and closes her eyes, but opens them again when she imagines she sees movement through her eyelids. She looks up at the ceiling in the darkness, and the lamp swaying almost imperceptibly.

  The vine growing up the wall has grown around the window of the guest bedroom, and its dry branches scrape against the windowsill.

  She thinks through that day’s work, her conversations with Nathan, the short audio file from Jeanette, the Beaver’s interest in the chemical industry, and a ferry outside Norrtälje.

  The boiler starts to clank down in the basement. It sounds like someone with cramp in an empty bathtub.

  She should be asleep by now, but now that the thought’s in her head she can’t help switching the light back on, grabbing her mobile and looking up ferries from Solö on the Internet.

  Almost at once she manages to find a timetable, and reads the names of the various stops, and sees that the ferry passes Högmarsö.

  It’s just one of many islands that the ferry calls at.

  Even so, Saga’s heart has started to beat faster.

  Högmarsö was where Jurek Walter’s body drifted ashore, and that was wher
e she met the churchwarden and was given the severed finger. That was where Joona thought she and Nathan should start their search.

  He wanted them to go there because he thought that would give them an opening into Jurek’s world.

  Saga realises that her hands are shaking as she looks up Anna Sjölin’s phone number and calls her.

  ‘Fuck,’ a hoarse voice says. ‘I was asleep … . What’s going on? This is—’

  ‘Did the Beaver say he lived on Högmarsö?’ Saga interrupts.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Did he live on an island in the archipelago called Högmarsö?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘But he took the ferry from Solö?’

  ‘That’s what I thought he said … look, I need to get some sleep …’

  ‘One more thing,’ Saga says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Are you listening?’

  ‘Yeees.’

  ‘Did the Beaver mention a churchwarden?’

  ‘I don’t know … Actually – yes, he said he was sleeping in a church.’

  38

  Joona and Lumi are approaching the small border town of Waldfeucht along a narrow road, Brabanter Strasse.

  The agricultural landscape is flat and wide, like a moss-green sea. White wind turbines stand out against the low winter sky.

  A flock of jackdaws takes off from a dark tree as they drive past.

  They left their hotel yesterday morning and drove north, through Switzerland and into Germany.

  They kept to minor roads close to Autobahn 5 up to Karlsruhe, driving for hours through smaller towns such as Trier and Düren in grey rain.

  Joona keeps one hand on the wheel as he talks through various points of strategy with Lumi, the various escape routes and meeting places.

  He tells her how to get her bearings in the landscape when it’s dark, with the help of simple trigonometry using visible phone masts.

  After the run-through they sit in silence, side by side, deep in thought. It’s impossible to tell where the sun is behind the white sky.

  Lumi’s face is turned away. The landscape runs quickly over her grey eyes.

  ‘Dad,’ she says eventually, taking a deep breath. ‘I’m doing this because I promised I would … but I don’t want to.’

  ‘I understand that.’