Rites of Spring

by Anders de la Motte

  ‘Thea Lind. Where did you get that name from?’

  She would really prefer to get to the point, find out what she has to do to keep the door leading to this part of her life firmly closed, but she decides to play along for a little while.

  ‘Thea was a girl who helped me revise for my college exams. It was thanks to her I got a place in medical school.’

  ‘And Lind?’ He licks the paper and seals the cigarette.

  ‘Another girl who lived on the same corridor as me. Veronica. She also came from the back of beyond and was determined to stay away, like me.’

  ‘Had she stolen money from her family too?’ Ronny lights the cigarette.

  Thea takes a deep breath. It’s just as she suspected.

  ‘Mum gave me that money. It was her life insurance.’

  ‘Mm . . .’ He blows out a column of smoke. ‘Three hundred thousand. What did you spend it on?’

  ‘My education. I rented a little student room in Umeå. Studied at the adult education institute for a year. Lived on noodles, revised like a demon for my exams. Got into medical school by the narrowest possible margin.’

  Ronny doesn’t say anything for a moment. He merely carries on smoking, watching her.

  ‘And now you’re the lady of the castle, married to a restaurant owner.’

  ‘I work part time as a GP. The castle is David’s project. We live in a little house behind it.’

  Ronny takes another drag.

  ‘We haven’t got any money,’ Thea continues. ‘David’s practically broke. He did some bad deals and had to sell up.’

  ‘But he owns a castle?’

  ‘He’s renting it from a foundation. Two of his old school friends are financing the project.’

  ‘So you say . . .’ Ronny stubs out the cigarette and immediately starts rolling another. Remains silent, letting her squirm.

  Frustratingly, it works.

  ‘Was Dad really angry when I left?’ She doesn’t want to ask the question, yet at the same time she wants to hear the answer.

  ‘What do you think? You were his favourite. He thought you and Jocke were going to get married and give him grandchildren. Instead you took off with his money.’

  ‘It was your money and mine too . . .’

  Ronny ignores the comment.

  ‘He looked for you for a long time. That business of getting a protected identity – very smart. He asked all his contacts to keep an eye out for you; he even persuaded a cop to check their database. But it was as if you’d gone up in a puff of smoke. At least until you popped up on TV.’

  He grins, lights the second cigarette.

  ‘What is it you want from me, Ronny?’

  He shakes his head. ‘Not me. The old man. He wants to see you.’

  ‘Now?’ She peers out of the window. The house where she and Ronny grew up is just visible on the edge of the forest.

  ‘As soon as possible.’ He follows her gaze. ‘He’s not there.’

  ‘So where is he?’

  ‘What do you think? In jail. Eight years for serious drugs offences. He’s still got four left to serve – that’s the issue.’

  ‘What do you mean, that’s the issue?’

  ‘I’ll let him tell you.’

  Ronny looks at his phone. ‘It’s an hour’s drive – you’ll be just in time for visiting.’

  Thea wants to protest, explain that she has to get back, that she has absolutely no desire to drive to a prison, or to see her father. But she doesn’t have a choice, and in a way she’s surprised. Why isn’t Ronny angry with her? He used to have a terrible temper, almost on a level with Dad’s. Has he mellowed over the years, or is there something she’s missing?

  *

  It’s still drizzling. She lets Emee out of the car, takes her for a walk along the dirt road, dodging the huge puddles.

  Her childhood home is built of grey brick, and backs onto the forest and the slope. The blinds are down, a couple of them hanging askew. The cellar windows have been boarded up, and an old wreck of a car without wheels sits on the drive. A few pieces of plastic garden furniture are sticking up among the knee-high grass, and several planks are missing from the rotting fence.

  She stops by the mail box; she doesn’t want to go any closer. The house makes her feel uncomfortable, particularly those boarded-up windows. How many times did Dad lock her in down there in the dark? More than she can count. The smell is still embedded in her brain. Dampness, earth, fear. Sometimes urine. If she stopped crying and kept really quiet, she could hear the faint sound of insects scuttling across the floor. The ones with hard bodies and vibrating wings.

  She’d promised herself that she would never come back, and yet she’s standing here. Is it just because she’s afraid of being exposed, caught out having lied about her past? Or is there another reason? Does some small part of her still long for Daddy’s approval, or even his forgiveness?

  *

  Ronny is waiting by her car, wearing a filthy hi-vis jacket. Two dogs are sniffing around him. Scruffy, muscular bodies. Square jaws, short snouts. They race towards her barking wildly as soon as they see Emee.

  ‘The boys just want to say hello,’ Ronny says.

  Emee lies down on the ground and Ronny’s dogs stand over her, legs apart, growling and baring their teeth. Emee presses herself even lower, head down.

  Thea hates to see her like that. Diminished, cowed. She tries to push away the two male dogs but the paler one snaps at her. Thea dodges to one side and drops the lead.

  Emee leaps to her feet, lets out a kind of roar and attacks the paler dog. The onslaught is so fierce that the animal rolls right over on the gravel.

  The darker dog goes for Emee, but she is ready for him. The two of them collide in mid-air, but Emee is bigger and stronger, knocking him over too. He quickly gets up and the two male dogs take up their positions a couple of metres away, hackles raised, but neither dares approach.

  Emee has been transformed from a submissive bitch into a predator with bared teeth. There is a look in her eyes that Thea has never seen before. She crouches down, preparing to attack, but at the last second Thea manages to grab her lead.

  ‘Calm down, sweetheart,’ she says, trying to pull her close.

  Emee flatly refuses to move. The muscles in her powerful body are tensed, and a low rumble is coming from deep in her chest.

  ‘Calm down,’ Thea says again. Emee stops growling, but continues to glare menacingly at the other two dogs.

  Ronny hasn’t intervened; he seems faintly amused.

  ‘Tough chick,’ he says.

  ‘She doesn’t like being walked all over,’ Thea replies.

  Ronny shouts a command, and after a couple of seconds’ hesitation his dogs shamble over to his house and lie down on the steps, keeping an eye on Thea and Emee from a safe distance.

  ‘I wanted to ask you something,’ Thea says. ‘Did you ever come across a young guy called Leo Rasmussen? He’s from Skåne, three years older than you. He was convicted of murdering his stepsister in 1986. He got six years.’

  She knows it’s a long shot, but somehow Emee’s reaction has given her a dose of self-confidence.

  Ronny shakes his head. ‘Doesn’t ring a bell.’

  ‘Do you know anyone who might know something about him?’

  One corner of his mouth lifts in a wry smile.

  ‘I’ve tried to stay on the right side of the law over the past few years; I didn’t want to get dragged into all that again. But you could always ask the old man. He’s got contacts everywhere.’

  *

  Thea puts Emee in the car and gets ready to leave. Ronny’s hard expression has softened.

  ‘Dad’s ill, Jenny. He’s not like he used to be.’

  ‘No?’

  Ronny shrugs. ‘Not really. I’ll call the prison, let him know you’re coming.’

  She wonders whether to thank him, but decides against it. She’s here because he forced her to come; it wasn’t her choice.
>
  ‘One more thing,’ he says as she opens the car door. He tugs at his beard, looking indecisive. ‘If he . . . If he gives you too much grief, ask him how Jocke died.’

  ‘Jocke?’

  He nods. For a brief moment she sees the Ronny who built dens and made pine cone animals for her. Then the moment is gone.

  ‘Drive carefully, sis. Good to see you.’

  54

  T

  he prison looks nothing like the institution Thea had imagined. No walls, no watchtowers, no steel gates. Just a simple fence enclosing a number of red two-storey buildings.

  The visitors’ room smells of coffee and cinnamon buns. The walls are painted in a familiar shade of hospital orange.

  Everything becomes clear when her father shuffles slowly into the room. He is gaunt, his clothes hanging off him, eyes sunken, his skin so thin that she feels as if she can see the blood vessels through it.

  Before she went in she hung around in the car park for at least ten minutes. Smoked four cigarettes and tried to gather her courage. Not that she succeeded. She has broken out in a cold sweat, her mouth is as dry as dust and she is sitting on her hands to stop them shaking.

  He stops by the table. Thea isn’t sure whether to stand up. Chooses to remain seated.

  ‘So here you are. The runaway. The lost child.’ His voice is hoarser than she remembers.

  ‘Hi, Leif.’ It’s the best she can come up with. She is surprised that her own voice holds.

  He pulls out a chair and sits down. It is clearly an effort. The weight loss, the skin taut over his scalp, the little tufts of hair – they all tell the same story. Chemotherapy. Cancer. Poor prognosis.

  His smile makes him look like a grinning skull.

  ‘I searched for you, little Jenny. Wondered where you’d gone with my money. I left no stone unturned, from Ystad in the south to Haparanda in the north.’

  Thea stays silent. Tries to stop her hands from trembling.

  ‘Imagine my surprise when I got a call from an old friend, telling me he thinks he’s seen you on TV. Says you’re a doctor, married to a man who owns a castle.’

  ‘David doesn’t have any money,’ Thea says as firmly as she can. ‘The castle doesn’t belong to him.’

  ‘Oh, you want to get straight to the point. Fine, let’s do that.’ He leans forward, fixes his gaze on her. Thea swallows hard. ‘I trusted you. Let you take care of my affairs. And what thanks did I get? You stole from me.’

  ‘It was our money. Mum . . .’

  ‘Your mother was an idiot,’ he snaps. ‘A stupid woman. You, on the other hand . . . you were smart. You knew how to get people exactly where you wanted them. Ronny, Jocke, even me.’ He shakes his head. ‘I had such high expectations of you, Jenny. But you let me down. Let your family down.’

  He coughs a couple of times.

  ‘But the past always catches up with us sooner or later, doesn’t it?’

  She doesn’t answer. For some reason she can’t take her eyes off his hands. They used to be rough and hard, now they look like thin birds’ claws. The backs are covered in brown liver spots, the nails are clean.

  She and Ronny used to be so scared of those hands.

  ‘And now you’re living in a castle,’ he goes on. ‘In a lovely little village, with a lovely little husband. But no children? Why not?’

  She shrugs. ‘Because I didn’t want any.’

  ‘Aha. You don’t like being tied down. You don’t want the responsibility of being a parent. The disappointment you risk when your child lets you down.’

  She knows he’s trying to provoke her, and yet she can’t help taking the bait.

  ‘Or maybe I didn’t want to risk the child inheriting your genes.’

  His mouth twitches, then the death’s head grin returns.

  ‘Sometimes I think about how different things would have been if you hadn’t lost Jocke’s child.’

  Thea doesn’t speak. She has no intention of pursuing that particular topic.

  ‘Poor Jocke – he was completely devastated when you left. He’d believed the two of you were going to get married. I was planning on giving you the house next door to Ronny’s, so that the whole family could be together. You and me, Jocke, Ronny and all the grandchildren.’

  ‘What do you want from me, Leif?’ She is surprised at how calm she sounds.

  Scorn is written all over his face.

  ‘Thea Lind. A fine name, much more elegant than Jenny Boman. A perfect name for the lady of the castle.’

  He coughs, more violently this time. He takes out a handkerchief, wipes his mouth, leaving a blob of yellow sputum at one corner of his lips.

  ‘Did you know that I worked at a castle when I was a boy? From the age of twelve. In the stables. I had to groom the horses, clean their hooves, muck out – all the jobs the fine folk didn’t want to do themselves. I liked horses. The owner used to give me riding lessons sometimes, and he’d slip me a bit of extra cash now and again. One Christmas he and his wife came to our house with two bags of second-hand clothes for me and my brothers and sisters. Playing Lord and Lady Bountiful.’

  He clears his throat, spits into the handkerchief. A dark stain appears on the white cotton.

  ‘Do you know what my father did?’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘He burned the lot in the back garden. Beat the crap out of me and forbade me from ever setting foot in that fucking stable again. People like that look down on the likes of us, he said. They can smell us, like dog shit on the sole of your shoe.’

  He points at her with a skinny finger.

  ‘The same thing will happen to you, Jenny. You can do your best to try and scrape us off the sole of your shoe; you can change your name, lose your accent, pretend to be someone you’re not. But sooner or later people will smell you. Expose you.’

  He sits up a little straighter. ‘Unless someone else gets there first, of course.’

  ‘You, for example.’

  ‘This is an open prison. I can move around freely, call whoever I want, use the internet. One well-aimed Facebook post is all it would take for your husband to get a whole lot of unwanted publicity around his restaurant project. Married to the daughter of a convicted criminal . . . well, you can imagine.’

  She takes a deep breath, holds it for a few seconds. Her head is pounding.

  ‘What do you want? I’ve already told you we don’t have any money.’

  He leans back, watches her for a little while.

  ‘As I’m sure you’ve realised, I’m sick. Lung cancer. The doctors have given me four months, six at the most. I want to die in my own home, in my own bed, not in the cheap fucking sheets of the criminal justice system.’

  He pushes the handkerchief into his pocket.

  ‘I want someone to write me a petition for a reprieve. Not some fancy lawyer, but someone who knows me, who can explain why I ought to be allowed to die in freedom. A reliable citizen with a snow-white past.’

  Thea places her hands on the table. They’ve stopped shaking. At last she knows what he wants.

  ‘And you think I’m going to do that?’

  He reaches out, rests one hand on hers. His long fingers are ice-cold.

  ‘You’re still my little girl, Jenny, in spite of everything. Whether you like it or not.’

  She slowly withdraws her hands.

  ‘And if I do it, you’ll leave me and David in peace?’

  He winks at her. ‘Maybe. You’ll just have to trust me, Jenny. You don’t have a choice.’

  She goes through the scenario in her head. A petition for a reprieve is presumably a matter of public interest, a traceable document that will reveal that she’s his daughter, even if he keeps his word. She needs to play for time. Time to think things over, work out a plan.

  He’s leaning back on his chair again, watching her carefully.

  ‘If . . .’ She clears her throat. ‘If I agree to consider it, I want a favour in return. Proof that I can trust
you.’

  He raises his eyebrows.

  ‘What makes you think you have the right to ask for anything?’

  ‘Because I’m your only option. Who else is going to give them your sob story? Ronny?’

  He stiffens, narrows his eyes.

  ‘Are you trying to blackmail me, little Jenny?’

  ‘No, I just want your help with something.’ Now it’s her turn to lean forward. ‘In 1986 a girl was killed in the forest by the castle where we live. Her stepbrother confessed and was convicted of murder. His name is Leo Rasmussen.’

  ‘And why does this interest you?’

  ‘Because I don’t believe the whole truth has come out.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘She was pregnant, but someone made sure that information was removed from the case file.’

  ‘Aha – so things ended badly for a pregnant young girl. I can see the appeal. Go on.’

  Thea swallows her irritation.

  ‘There is also a suggestion that the stepbrother retracted his confession. He claimed that the police had put him under extreme pressure, brainwashed him.’

  Her father continues to gaze at her with that annoying smile, making it clear that he’s enjoying himself at her expense.

  ‘So what do you want my help with?’

  ‘I’d like to find out whether any of your friends knows someone who might have been in jail with Leo. Whether he talked about the murder when he was inside. Where he went after he got out.’

  Her father chews his lower lip, keeping her in suspense.

  ‘Why should I waste my time on this, little Jenny? I’m the one who’s holding the trump card. I can crush you like a louse if you don’t do exactly as I ask.’

  He taps his index finger on the table, just like he used to do when he wanted to scare her.

  ‘Be a good girl and do what Daddy says, then I might consider forgiving you for what you did. For abandoning your own family.’

  She looks down, eyes burning with anger. She has to submit. Let him walk all over her if she’s going to have any chance of sorting out this tangled mess. Because nobody fucks with Leif Boman.

  She takes a deep breath, suddenly remembers what Ronny said just before she left. It’s worth a try.