Black Ice

by Ian Giles

  “I know you haven’t named me or anyone else involved. And I guess you probably consider the book to be an extensive, detailed police report. Smart move—and you’re generating a lot of interest around the case too. The cases, I should say. People will follow as it unfolds and find out who’s who on their own. I’ll be particularly harshly condemned in the eyes of the public since you’ve given them so much understanding of those events that you describe. That’s why I’m begging you, Sandra. Please let me set things right, but don’t ruin my life.”

  “You’ve done that all by yourself,” Sandra couldn’t help herself from saying.

  She said it slowly and with emphasis on every word, hoping that the message would get through, even though she was talking as if she had a mouth filled with porridge. Hallin frowned and looked at her with suspicion.

  “I admit the rape,” he said unexpectedly. “I’m sorry—it was a terrible thing to do and I’m ashamed. I’m prepared to pay the child support that you’ve asked for and stay away from the boy, if that’s how you want it. But stop that serial now, give it an ending that people like, but that has nothing to do with reality. I’ll admit to the hit-and-run, if that’s important to you—but don’t force me to be pilloried as a rapist when it was just a one-time step over the line, an isolated incident. At least give me some humanity.”

  He said the last bit while bending forward with his eyes fixed on hers, and with a tap on the laptop at the foot of the bed with his clenched fist. Despite the fact that she had hidden it under the covers, he had still figured out where it was. Sandra opened her eyes wide in horror and shook her head in protest at what he had demonstrated he was capable of and what he presumably intended to do.

  “For the love of God, give me some humanity,” he begged again. “For what it’s worth, I also think you ought to consider very carefully whether you really want to publish this, for your own sake. Given you’ve got the wrong end of the stick in a lot of places. Especially on some of the more important stuff, I’d say. Your credibility will be gone if you pursue that line.”

  “Which line?” Sandra asked, and this time she was met with an almost scared look.

  “That I supposedly murdered Peter Norling. And buried his body. That I sent funeral flowers and sabotaged the brakes on your car. That I kidnapped a child. Was he meant to die? Without knowing any of the details, I would guess so. Would I attempt the murder of a three-year-old? My own son? I can tell you in all certainty, Sandra, that’s out of the question.”

  “Who else could it be?” said Sandra with an attempt at a sneer.

  “Sorry, I didn’t catch what you said,” Hallin said.

  “Who?” Sandra said unambiguously.

  “Who did if I didn’t?” Hallin interpreted suspiciously. “You should have had the decency to find that out before you wrote your fucking serial.”

  Darkness was descending before Sandra’s eyes—she was unsure whether it was the poison or the horror of what this man intended to do to her.

  “Who’s guilty?” Sandra persevered. She could no longer see who she was talking to.

  “What are you saying? What’s wrong with your speech?”

  Her balance was failing. She collapsed back on the bed, no longer able to keep playing along.

  “What’s wrong with you, Sandra?” Hallin cried out. He stood up and grabbed her shoulders. “What the hell is going on?”

  Sandra was no longer capable of communicating, but that didn’t matter either. She wasn’t in a state to protect either her son or herself from external dangers, and she would never see the computer again. If she ever woke up, which didn’t seem all that likely.

  She closed her eyes and glided into the darkness.

  73

  Kerstin

  JEANETTE WAS LYING in bed looking strangely peaceful, almost happy. Perhaps convinced that she was going to succeed this time, that she had scared off Kerstin well enough that the night was hers to die in. Jeanette had been wrong, but Kerstin had allowed herself to be affected by Jeanette’s harsh words, and the bitter aftertaste had lingered for a long time. That was why she was now standing here contemplating the earthly remains of her best friend, her worst enemy, with tears streaming down her cheeks.

  Of course she could have stopped this if she had been thicker skinned, less sensitive about how she was perceived, more analytical in her perspectives on those closest to her. At the time, this had been Jeanette’s wish—to cease to be—and perhaps it ought to be respected. Jeanette no longer owed anybody anything, she no longer had any family or any loved ones that she had moral obligations to. Kerstin and the other friends on the benches were extras in Jeanette’s life. She was the maker of her own happiness, and a dreadful one at that; in her heart and soul she was incapable of being part of a community or feeling genuine joy. Jeanette’s causes for rejoicing lay in the past, and she didn’t want it to be any other way.

  Kerstin caressed Jeanette’s cheek and wiped away one of her own tears that had landed on her face. She lifted the covers slightly. Jeanette was beautiful. She had changed clothes since their last meeting a few hours ago, and she was wearing white jeans and a blue and white striped sleeveless blouse. The room around her was tidy, and Kerstin was grateful that Jeanette had chosen to end her life sleeping in bed, rather than dangling from a hook on the ceiling or submerged in a bathtub filled with water. That would have been much more demanding of the person who discovered the tragedy.

  Kerstin ran her fingers through Jeanette’s fringe, adjusted the covers, and left the bedroom. What she really wanted to do was sink to the floor and let all the sobs out of her body. Instead she swallowed a few times, wiped her nose, and stepped into the kitchen with a disconsolate and very heavy sigh. Jeanette was gone, and with her a whole era had drawn to a close.

  Kerstin’s clouded gaze stopped at the table, where Jeanette had left her mobile. Beside it there was an envelope with the words “To Kerstin Barbenius” on it. Her first impulse was to pocket it to read later, but after some consideration she concluded that this was not something to delay. She rubbed her eyes with her hands, opened the envelope using her thumb, and pulled out the handwritten letter.

  Nanna,

  I’m guessing you’re first on the scene—sorry this is what you found. Today felt like a good day to take this step. Just like you pointed out, I’ve been very lucky to get to know you and get the opportunity to explain myself and apologise for the indefensible things I did in the past. You say you’ve forgiven me, and that’s almost certainly true. I’m grateful for that, but as you know, I’m unable to forgive myself. Maybe I can’t, maybe I don’t want to, but there’s one thing I do know—I don’t want to be alive here and now. I want Charlotte in my life, and perhaps Peter too.

  The truth is that I’m too lazy to go on living. I don’t have it in me to build new, close relationships, and I don’t have the strength to believe that any opportunities like that would come along in the future.

  Love.

  Hope.

  The joy of life.

  No, you can hear for yourself how alien those words sound when they come from me. But that’s what I wish for, for those of you who never gave up hope in me. You, Nanna. And Lubbi, Jimmy, Micki, Kat, and the others. You probably see yourselves as my friends, but I don’t have any friends and I am friend to no one.

  Thanks for trying.

  Sorry that I didn’t.

  Don’t grieve, I don’t love anyone.

  Best wishes, Jeanette.

  PS. The mobile is for you. There are photos on it that I took after the hit-and-run. Take good care of them.

  The letter was peculiarly absent of any statements of tenderness, honest in its nakedness. Jeanette had wanted to say thank you and sorry—she hadn’t wanted them to believe they had meant anything to her. A loveless and therefore meaningless existence was what she had left, and at least her suffering was over.

  Kerstin tore off a sheet of the kitchen roll on the counter and wiped away her tears before
dialling emergency services.

  74

  Jan

  HE STOOD THERE looking at his unconscious antagonist, weighing up how to respond to the situation. This was very much match point, and all Jan had to do was take the computer and leave. That would mean all his problems would be gone and life would be able to return to normal—which had been the intention of this visit from the beginning.

  It was not without bitterness that he recalled Sandra had accused him of kidnapping a child and attempted murder. What was so awful was that Jan actually had something to gain from Sandra’s boy ceasing to exist. He would evade the paternity issue, the demands for child support, the rape accusations, and the suspected involvement in the hit-and-run by the ravine. If there was no child, then none of the rest existed either—and Sandra could sit there with her serial and her accusations without there being any evidence to back them up.

  But now the boy had been found, and it seemed to be Sandra’s own life that was suddenly at stake. This actually suited Jan even better than her computer just disappearing from the face of the earth. That meant the police would never get interested in Sandra’s story, and Jan would never be investigated. The beautiful façade that the Hallin family had maintained for so long would continue to stand, just like the good reputation of Jan and his wife. The family wouldn’t have to suffer, and there would be no derision at what had gone on behind the scenes.

  There was a sound from the foot of the bed and Jan was roused from his contemplation. He lifted the covers, picked up the computer, and opened it. Of course, it was the book manuscript that he was interested in rather than the email that had just arrived, but he still clicked on the email out of reflex. There were a number of pictures on the computer screen of a car, a body, and a face.

  But not just any face.

  The email had been sent by someone at Gotlands Allehanda and contained a question: “Is this to do with Erik’s kidnapping?” Jan gasped for breath, turning to ice on the spot. Of course, he said to himself. How had he managed to avoid seeing it?

  The face was Gunilla’s.

  And here was Sandra, lying there completely knocked out—perhaps dying—right in front of him, while he held her laptop in his hands.

  How was he supposed to deal with this?

  75

  Sandra

  WHEN SHE CAME to, the room was in semidarkness, but some daylight was filtering in from somewhere. She was tucked in bed, and she felt around the foot of the bed with her feet. The bastard had taken advantage of the situation, stolen the computer, and got out of there. Hallin’s campaign of persuasion hadn’t succeeded, so all that remained was to commit further crimes—in the classic style—to protect himself from accusations relating to the earlier ones.

  She closed her eyes again and tried to recollect how the conversation had progressed and how it had ended. But the only thing that seemed to have stuck in her brain was how eager he had been to silence her, how he had insinuated that he had every opportunity to seize the computer and get his hands on the writing that was upsetting him so much.

  Slowly, the awareness that something else—something much worse—had happened during the night began to dawn on her. Had she been somehow unwell? Why else was she in bed in the middle of the day? Had he drugged her so he could take the laptop? Tried to kill her? Was that the real reason for his visit?

  She couldn’t remember a disturbance. Instead, she remembered the bilberry soup she had been given, and how it had brought back childhood memories. She remembered Erik’s deep sleep, the calm he had radiated and his rhythmic breathing.

  Erik! She suddenly remembered. Was he all right? Had Hallin harmed him again? She sat up in bed and looked around in horror. The room looked different. There were several other people asleep in the room, but Erik wasn’t there. Where was Erik? Instinctively, she reached for the red alarm button and pressed it. She noted that she had tubes and wires connected to her and that her condition was being monitored by machines. She let her head rest back on her pillow and tried to marshal her complicated thoughts into order.

  She remembered Hallin’s shaken look when he had seen her. How he had grabbed her upper arms and shouted things. Maybe in his desperation he had attacked both her and Erik? Tears welled up in her eyes, but before anyone had time to respond to the alarm, she had drifted back into unconsciousness.

  76

  Jan

  WHEN THE SUN came up, Jan still hadn’t slept a wink. The anger and confusion following the shocking discovery made his pulse thunder at his temples, and he felt like the stress wouldn’t ever dissipate. He paced back and forth, trying to sort through the thousand thoughts streaming through his brain.

  The boy, he thought to himself. The fact that Erik had been found didn’t help Jan, but he didn’t seriously want a small child dead. The threat to Sandra’s health—seemingly from poison—was beneficial for Jan and also his wife, for whom the charming façade and the excellent reputation were even more important than they were for him. Earlier that day she had comforted him on the phone and given her wholehearted support for his idea of fleeing from the anticipated spread of rumours and disappearing from Gotland—indeed, from Sweden. Jan going underground would almost certainly be taken as a confession, which indeed it was, but not of murder and kidnapping. A move like that would definitely shift focus away from the person who was responsible for the truly terrible crimes here.

  The person saving her own skin when the suspicions began to pile up against Jan. The one who had imperceptibly manipulated him ever since the beginning of this story. She had seemed supportive, but had in practice had her eye on one thing only: the family’s honour. And alongside that, the well-to-do life they had led.

  It wasn’t for Jan’s sake that she had so ruthlessly removed obstacles to their shared well-being. At first glance, it might seem like that, but it became clearer and clearer to him that the woman he had chosen to share his life with was prepared to do anything to appear in a good light and to live in financial comfort. She had literally stepped across bodies. After all these years he was seeing his wife for the first time, in a new and less flattering light.

  Gunilla had convinced him that he had done the right thing in not climbing down into the ravine. Jan had interpreted it as meaning that rather than finding fault, she supported him in a decision that was irreversible. But when it came to the punch, it must have suited her better that he had left the scene of the accident without raising the alarm. Personally, he had almost immediately reached the opposite conclusion due to his conscience, but there was no going back.

  When the blackmail letter had turned up on the kitchen counter one dinner time, Gunilla hadn’t confronted him straightaway, despite the fact that his reaction awakened suspicions, judging by her expression. She had let him withdraw to his study with the letter before she checked up on him, at the expense of the food getting cold on the stove. She had seen him fumbling through the photos on the sly and demanded an explanation from him. It turned out that she had already drawn certain conclusions about what had happened that day, and now that Jan had come clean about everything that had happened, she had been set on solving the problem rather than showering him with reproach. “Think,” she had insisted. “If it was impossible for the girl to take those photos then someone else must have done it. Think.” But Jan had managed that all by himself, just before Gunilla had showed up. He had told her about the memory of Peter Norling’s company car up there on the narrow forest track above the ravine. How he had realised that Norling had in all likelihood been the person behind the blackmail attempt against him. He had to be the one who was threatening to go to the police with the photos and report Jan for at least the hit-and-run. If he didn’t get six million kronor.

  Now it transpired—at least if Sandra’s serial was to be believed—that Peter Norling had been by the ravine and had witnessed the accident, but that he was innocent of the blackmail attempt. Nevertheless, he had vanished after a few days, and with him the threat. This
had been very fortuitous for Jan, who hadn’t come up with a better plan than hoping for the best while awaiting catastrophe in a state of perplexity. As far as Gunilla was concerned, that kind of approach was alien—and Jan ought to have understood that back then. Naively, he had never regarded it as Gunilla’s concern that he would end up in prison for rape, a hit-and-run, and so on. He had seen that as his own problem.

  Only now could he look past his own perception of Gunilla—the perception of the world at large too. He could see clearly how she emerged from the shadows in the car park outside PN Auto. The irresistible Gunilla, who had seen Norling coming out of the garage for his lunchbreak and persuaded him to get into her car. He had accompanied her south to where her broken-down SUV was, the one that had been lent to their son, who had a house not far from there. Charming Gunilla, who despite the cheeky imposition and the time it had taken, had kept him sweet all the way down to Digerrojr, and had somehow managed to switch off his mobile. Or destroy it. Inexorable Gunilla, who had lured him to his future burial site in the woods, where the pit had already been dug and the supposedly broken-down SUV might have been, or perhaps not, even if it was the pretext for getting him there. Hard-boiled Gunilla, who had whacked him with a shovel when he was least expecting it, who had mobilised all her strength and repeated the movement as many times as required for her life to continue as normal. Whereupon Peter Norling had fallen or been helped into the pre-dug grave and had thus disappeared.

  It was terrible. The fact that Jan’s wife of more than twenty-five years was capable of such acts was a complete surprise to him. It transpired that he didn’t know her at all, while for her part Gunilla knew him better than he knew himself. She had duped him without him noticing and deceived him into thinking and believing only the things she had wanted him to think and believe.