Liv

by Mikaela Bley

  They hadn’t seen each other in over a year. The last time they had talked was probably last Christmas, when they’d wished each other Merry Christmas over the phone.

  ‘Maybe we should do something like a New Year’s letter where we update each other on what’s happened recently. Like the one you and Mum used to send to all your friends, where you summed up the past year and how good things were in our little family.’

  He raised his eyebrows.

  ‘I’m joking,’ she hurried to say. ‘Is everything okay?’

  ‘Yes, I think so,’ he said, taking off his jacket and hanging it neatly over the arm of the chair. ‘I’ve got a lot of work, but of course that’s a positive. Nyköping is becoming very lucrative for a criminal defence attorney.’

  Ellen nodded. She didn’t have that much to tell, herself. What had actually happened? It was as if life carried on for everyone else, but not for her. Maybe she ought to have been grateful that he didn’t ask how she was feeling. She didn’t know if she could bear to talk about it, and he probably didn’t want to hear the truth anyway.

  Ellen felt sweaty and dirty, and wished she actually had changed her clothes. ‘Did you hear about the murder in Stentuna?’

  ‘Ellen, I think you should focus on the right things now, okay?’

  He spoke slowly, as if she were a little child who didn’t understand — and as if he knew what was best for her.

  ‘Okay.’ She bit her lip and then continued. ‘Is the family okay, then?’

  ‘Absolutely. School has gone back now, so things are very busy, but Carro is doing a top job with them.’

  Ellen drank a little more of her ice tea. Carro, yes. ‘Everything fine with her?’

  Not one counter-question from him so far, and still she continued to ask him about himself — like a stupid dog wagging its tail even though it had been hit.

  ‘Yes, she’s opened a little interior-design shop in Nyköping and it’s going gangbusters, which is really cool. She’s been going to these trade shows and she’s found these really nice things in see-through colours — seems it’s the new thing for autumn. She gets the best stuff, you should take a look.’

  Ellen nodded, and wondered whether he remembered that she only had black-and-white furniture at home.

  ‘We were actually in Stockholm last week, looking at a possible space there.’

  How nice of you to let me know.

  ‘And summer, then — has it been good?’ Why couldn’t she just keep her mouth shut? She didn’t even really want to know. From now on, she would stay quiet.

  ‘It was good — we were in France and it was warmer than ever there, so we’ve had a great summer. Far from twelve degrees Celsius and rain, like it was here.’

  Ellen put on her sunglasses. There was no one who could make her feel as insignificant as her dad did. It must have been torture for him to sit there with his failure of a daughter from his former life. So nice for him that he had been able to start over, had found a new, non-bitter wife who’d opened an interior-design shop with see-through colours, that he’d moved from the estate and cut all ties with his former life.

  ‘Have you talked to your brother lately?’

  Was he joking with her now? ‘No. You?’

  ‘Yes, he stops by sometimes — and then we run into each other at the office, of course — but it’s busy for everyone. Work, work, work.’ He drummed on the table with his fingers.

  ‘Yes, here too. All work. I don’t know how I’m going to keep on taking care of the estate,’ Margareta said, finally back with a beer in hand. ‘Confounded wasps!’ She waved them away with her hand. ‘It must be hot for them, too — look how slowly they’re moving,’ she said, handing the beer to Erik.

  ‘It’s the same here; it looks nice.’ He sipped the beer.

  ‘I do my best.’

  It didn’t matter that Ellen actually sympathised with her mother; for every bitter comment Margareta dropped, it was as if she added a kilo to Ellen’s shoulders.

  ‘Ellen, will you please take off your sunglasses and stop acting like a teenager?’

  Reluctantly, Ellen pulled off her sunglasses and set them on the table.

  Erik leant forward. ‘Your mother and I have discussed this. We know you haven’t gone to work, and hardly left the apartment all summer — well, ever since you worked on that story about the girl …’

  ‘Lycke.’

  ‘Yes, exactly, whatever her name was. Anyway, you haven’t paid your rent, and presumably no bills either. Soon, you’ll probably have the bailiff after you, too. You have money. I don’t understand why you don’t pay. I can’t let you stay there if you don’t take care of yourself and start acting like an adult.’

  Ellen thought about how it had felt when she’d been incapable of getting out of bed. When her body was as heavy as lead, and when anxiety settled like a noose around her neck. When all her energy went into surviving the day, even though she didn’t really want to.

  ‘You can’t go on like that any more. And the psychiatric emergency clinic — Ellen, that’s serious stuff.’

  She tried to picture the image her parents had of the psychiatric ER. Probably as a kind of nuthouse from the fifties, where the patients were strapped down in beds, screaming as they received their shock treatment.

  ‘We really care about you,’ he continued.

  There was a sudden burning sensation behind her eyes.

  Erik continued sipping his beer. ‘We want you to stay here with Mum until things get better.’

  ‘But what will I do here?’ she managed to get out. Didn’t they understand that being at Örelo just made her feel worse?

  ‘You can ride, and take the boat, or whatever.’ Erik suddenly held his nose. ‘God, I’d truly forgotten how much it smells like pigs here.’

  You smell bad.

  She wished she hadn’t let his earlier comments get to her so much; it weakened her defences, making her receptive to yet another blow.

  ‘Maybe you can try singing — you used to be so good at that,’ he continued.

  ‘It was Elsa who was good at singing.’ To emphasise the point, she put on her sunglasses again. Even though her twin sister had died in a tragic drowning accident when they were eight years old, they were still compared to each other.

  ‘No, it was you — don’t you remember when we were at the end-of-school performance and you kept on singing, even though everyone else had stopped? You sang a whole verse by yourself with such feeling that you didn’t even notice you were singing a solo. And then, when you realised no one else was singing … that look.’ He started to laugh. ‘I’ll never forget it. You were so sweet.’

  She tried to stop herself, but couldn’t help smiling.

  ‘The most important thing is that you get better,’ he said, serious again.

  ‘Yes. So I’ve scheduled Dr Hiralgo three times a week to start with.’

  ‘What?’ Erik looked at Margareta. ‘Why? We don’t need to sign up with some new-age quack. Ellen needs to focus on the future, not wallow in what’s already happened. Isn’t he into hypnosis and digging up old memories and crap? It’s bullshit.’

  ‘He helped me when you left us,’ Margareta replied.

  Please, Mum, don’t bring that up. Please.

  ‘I think it will be good for Ellen,’ she continued. ‘She has to work through what happened in order to be able to move forward. She’s already gone to several psychologists, and that hasn’t helped. This can’t go on any longer. Time has caught up with us. We can’t keep going the way we have …’

  Hello, I’m sitting right here.

  They were interrupted by the sound of Erik’s phone ringing.

  ‘You and I will talk about this later,’ he said, looking at Margareta. ‘When Ellen isn’t present. Excuse me, I have to take this.’

  Ellen followed
her father with her eyes as he stood up to take the call away from the table. ‘What are you and Dad going to talk about without me?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I’d prefer we discuss this together.’

  ‘Not everything is about you, Ellen.’

  Ellen snorted, but didn’t say anything. They remained sitting in silence, staring out over the still lake.

  After a few minutes, Erik came back to the table.

  ‘I’ve got to go. Clients, you know. But this is going to work out — it’s good that we’re dealing with it now. Call me if you need help with anything. And Ellen, be sure to get better now, otherwise you can’t keep the apartment at Skeppsbron. We have to be able to trust that you take care of yourself in the future.’ He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek, thanked Margareta for the beer, and quickly disappeared up to the house.

  ELLEN

  1.05 P.M.

  Ellen went up the old stone staircase and along the corridor that had bedrooms lining both sides, a number on each door so no one would get lost. She and Elsa had played hotel here when they were little. The heat couldn’t penetrate through the thick walls, and it was nice and cool. Ellen breathed cautiously through her mouth. Olfactory memory was the worst — nothing else could throw her back in time like that.

  Before going into her room, number sixteen, she took note of the marks on the wall. Every year, Ellen and Elsa had measured how tall they were. And every year they were exactly the same height — except for once, when Ellen had cheated and stood slightly on tiptoe. That was the last time they’d measured each other.

  Ellen took a deep breath and opened the door.

  Her old childhood room was stuffy and smelt confined. She threw her bag onto the bed and opened the window. The lake was smooth as a mirror. The air was still out there, too, and not even a breath of wind worked its way in to relieve the pressure.

  Down by the boathouse, Margareta was still sitting gazing out at the lake. It hurt Ellen to see her like that. She wished she could do something to help her mother. But she was the wrong person. Ellen only reminded Margareta of the sorrow and loss she felt after Elsa; when Margareta looked at Ellen, all she saw was Elsa.

  ‘Death, death, death …’ Ellen tapped her fingers feverishly, attempting to stop the escalating feelings that were starting to press in.

  She quickly rooted out a cigarette in the bag and lit it. Didn’t have the energy to care about the consequences of the smell of smoke. She flicked the ashes into the empty water glass that her mother had set out on the nightstand, and opened the bottle of Ramlösa sparkling water. She took a gulp of the lukewarm water and then poured a little into the glass. Setting out the bottle was a nice gesture, but it made her feel like a guest in her own home.

  She lay down on top of the bedspread. Drew the smoke into her lungs.

  The hand-painted floral wallpaper made her dizzy. On either side of the bed hung a portrait of one of Ellen’s parents — they’d had them painted on their engagement day. Their guilt-inducing eyes were the last thing Ellen saw before she fell asleep and the first thing she saw when she woke up.

  It was death that had shaped her, and it was death that kept her afloat. Equally contradictory and reasonable. She could handle other people’s sadness and horror. Her own sadness was frozen solid, and nothing could be done with it. A ticking bomb, Philip called it, and she knew he was right. But she still couldn’t bring herself to do anything.

  She felt captive, and she longed for Philip and for her apartment, but she also knew that there was a lot in her life that needed to change. In the end it was probably a good thing that Philip and her unpaid rent had given away her condition, and that they’d finally got her out of the apartment and Skeppsbron. She understood that — but could she cope with this?

  Ellen took her phone out of her bag and googled ‘murder stentuna’.

  The local newspaper, Södermanland News, had the murder on its homepage. She skimmed the story. There wasn’t really anything new.

  On the Flashback forums there was a short thread. People speculated that this was domestic violence — exactly as she’d suspected. The victim’s name was also used; asterisks were covering some letters, but it was easy to work out what her name was.

  Liv Lind, age forty-one. Registered at Folkunga Street on Södermalm, the south side of Stockholm. Single, Ellen assumed, because no one else was registered at the same address. Accountant. The company was registered at the same address.

  She flicked to her inbox, saw that Agatha hadn’t answered the email about the licence plates, and quickly closed it again to avoid seeing all the unread emails that had piled up over the summer.

  Facebook. Ellen hesitated at first, but then clicked on the app. She ignored all the new messages and friend invitations, searched ‘Liv Lind’, and scrolled through her feed. Nothing. No ‘rest in peace’ messages.

  She opened Liv’s photo album and was able to see some pictures, though they weren’t friends. A picture where she was standing with a glass of rosé in her hand. Published over a year ago. Long blonde hair. Round cheeks. Another picture that was taken last summer showed her in a boat, and then there was one where she was standing under an umbrella, looking happy. She seemed to have gone to high school in Umeå and studied economics in Kristianstad.

  What was she doing in Stentuna?

  Ellen went to her list of friends and scrolled down through the 121 names. They had no friends in common, which wasn’t really that unexpected, but sometimes it could turn out that you had a connection to people you’d never met or heard of before.

  She continued searching, and she stopped feeling so claustrophobic. But there was no new information on the sites.

  She sat up in bed and dialled the number for the police, then asked to speak with Börje Swahn. He answered after just a few rings.

  ‘Yes, this is Börje.’

  His voice was deep. She guessed that he was in his fifties.

  ‘Hi, this is Ellen Tamm. I’m calling from TV4 News. I have a few questions concerning the murder in Stentuna — Liv Lind.’

  ‘From TV4, you said?’ He laughed.

  ‘Yep, is that funny somehow?’

  ‘No, sorry. It’s just that you never know what you journalists are going to get excited about.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ She felt slightly irritated, but now wasn’t the time to start an argument with him. ‘Can you confirm the victim was Liv Lind?’

  ‘No, I can’t confirm anything. But perhaps you can explain to me — we had another homicide last week, also a woman who was beaten to death, in Brandkärr. You know about that?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ellen. She knew the area, but not the murder.

  ‘Then maybe you can see what I’m getting at. There were no TV channels calling up for that one. What actually gets you people excited? I’ve always wondered. Why are you calling now?’

  She understood what he meant. ‘Coincidences,’ was the best she could come up with. ‘We can’t cover everything, but we do the best we can.’ She was embarrassed for her channel and herself. ‘I am interested now, though, and it’s important for the media and the police to have a good dialogue. Is there any information you can give me?’

  ‘Unfortunately, I can’t say anything other than that we are investigating a serious crime.’

  ‘What was the cause of death?’

  He sighed. ‘I can’t go into any details. Assault, that’s all I can say.’

  ‘What do you believe has happened?’

  ‘We don’t believe anything, we proceed from the information we have and work based on that. We did a crime-scene investigation of the site today. We visited neighbours and are talking with possible witnesses. At the present time I can’t say any more than that.’

  ‘Is the family informed?’

  ‘We have to get back to work here now, but thanks for c
alling.’

  ‘Could you at least take my number, in case you come up with something?’

  They exchanged numbers and ended the call, but just before she went to hang up, she heard a crackling on the phone.

  ‘Hello?’ she said, but he didn’t seem to hear her. His own voice, on the other hand, could be heard some distance from the phone.

  He hadn’t hung up.

  Instinctively, Ellen turned up the sound on her phone and tried to hear what was being said. There was crackling and buzzing. She was able to make out that they were talking about TV4. That something was absurd. It was hard to hear exactly what they were saying, but she opened the recording app and pressed the red button. Just in case they said something of value.

  Suddenly it came through more clearly.

  ‘What’s there to be interested in? That woman probably got what she deserved.’ Börje laughed; so did someone else in the background. ‘Her man probably got tired of all the nagging at home and finally had to put a stop to it, as they say.’

  ‘Yes, that thought isn’t totally unfamiliar.’ Several people laughed.

  ‘A woman should know her place …’ Laughter and coughing in turn.

  ‘She probably has herself to blame. That’s what happens if you sleep around.’

  ALEXANDRA

  10.00 P.M.

  Patrik’s breathing was irregular, and his heart was pounding against her back.

  He kissed her on the shoulder as his hand reached down under the covers. ‘I want to take you from behind,’ he whispered, pressing his warm body against hers.

  ‘Please, just hold me,’ said Alexandra, taking his hand in hers.

  ‘You know I have to leave soon.’ He kissed the back of her neck.

  ‘I know, that’s exactly why. Just hold me, hard.’ She wished they could sleep that way the whole night. Even though she ought to be used to it by now, she struggled to keep it together. Constant. Suddenly she felt something wet against her shoulder. ‘Are you crying?’ she whispered, feeling a stab in her stomach.