The chatter in the other room is getting louder, echoing slightly in the large space. Bus, metro, parking? Nice to get a bit of rain. Good for the lawn. It’s been a lovely summer, though, don’t you think? Almost like the Mediterranean. Got any plans for the weekend?
She’s regretting it now. Regretting not taking the redundancy payment they offered her. Anyone sensible would have taken it. Left everything behind and started again somewhere else. It doesn’t really matter where. A different city, a different part of the country. Why not even a completely different country?
It isn’t too late yet.
The back door is right there in front of her. She’s got the keys in her pocket. Outside is a flight of concrete steps and some bins, then the street. It wouldn’t take a minute to sneak out. But she’s signed their papers, assured them that she’s worth a second chance. Convinced herself that it’s the last one she’s going to get.
The noise in the other room is getting louder and louder. The flask goes on wheezing, louder as the amount of coffee inside decreases. The conversation is starting to stall.
Goodness, yes. You really can’t complain about the weather, you really can’t . . .
She sits up, glances at the back door. Shuts her eyes. Her fingers find their way to her lower right arm, her nails scratch the thin fabric of the shirt and the cuff starts to slide up towards her elbow. In less than a minute she could be outside on the rain-wet tarmac. Free. Heading away from here.
The door swings open. It’s Ruud. He crouches down. Touches her knee.
‘Is everything OK, Veronica?’
His big hand is warm, the liver-spots clearly visible. How old is he really? Closer to seventy than sixty. He’s worked here for twenty years, has seen and heard all the misery that can be seen and heard. Has definitely earned his pension. Yet he’s still here. Why? For the free coffee, she’s heard him say, and the laughter that always follows saves him from further questions. A smart trick. Something she ought to try herself.
She looks up at him and forces herself to smile. Tugs her sleeve down over her wrist. Ruud thinks she’s scared, and at one level he’s absolutely right. She’s terrified. Utterly terrified. But that isn’t the whole truth.
‘Fine. I’m just trying to gather my thoughts a bit. Run through the routine,’ she says, tapping the notepad on her lap.
‘Good.’ Ruud holds his hand out and helps her to her feet. ‘How long has it been since you were last at work? Three months?’
Even though they’ve spent almost a week together he’s still pretending he doesn’t know every last detail of the arrangement. As if he isn’t the one who has to make sure she sticks to it.
And, just as before, she plays along.
‘Two months, two weeks and four days. Not that I’m counting.’
Ruud laughs. ‘That’s more like it. You’ll soon see that this isn’t much different to where you used to work.’
He leads her out into the meeting room. Drops his careful grip of her elbow just before the participants turn round.
Nine people, a few more than she was expecting on a Friday afternoon. Evasive glances, tentative smiles, brief nods of greeting. A feeling of hopelessness hangs over the room like a sticky veil, huddling in the dark corners where the fluorescent lights can’t quite reach, stopping any oxygen getting in.
She forces herself to smile again, sits down on one of the chairs and opens her notepad. Her heart jumps into her throat, making her feel slightly sick. She can feel Ruud watching her from over by the wall, but doesn’t look in that direction. She tries not to think about why he’s here.
A deep breath. She feels inside her chest. Finds the ice without any problem.
‘Hello, and welcome. My name is Veronica Lindh, and I’m a conversational therapist specialising in the treatment of grief. I worked for the Civic Centre for four years, but this is my first day with you here in the southern district.’
She is surprised by how steady her voice sounds. Alien, almost as if Veronica Lindh’s voice isn’t hers, which of course is partially true.
‘This support group is for those of us who have lost someone close to us, someone we loved.’
All eyes are focused on her. Her heart is thudding against the layer of ice just below her ribcage. She imagines it growing slightly weaker with every beat. Beat after beat, until a crack opens up and the black water beneath becomes visible.
‘I lost my mum when I was fourteen years old. One night she filled her coat pockets with stones, then walked out onto an ice-covered lake.’
She mustn’t hesitate now. Mustn’t stop, mustn’t look up. Another breath. The cold gradually spreads through her chest.
‘There was a man on the other side of the lake. He said Mum walked straight out, even though the sound of the ice cracking was unmistakeable. When he called out to her she stopped in the middle of the ice and looked at him. Then she was gone.’
She forces herself not to think about the gap in the ice. Imagines the ice closing up again, above her mum, above the crack in her chest. It freezes to solid armour.
She clears her throat and gently hugs the notepad. No one has the chance to see her hands shaking, not even Ruud.
‘Mum chose to leave us,’ she says. ‘She left my dad, my older brother and me, and we had to cope on our own. It was many years before I was able to forgive her. Before I stopped asking the question you’re all asking.’
She swallows a couple of times, feels her blood resume a texture far more pleasant than cold water. She’s done it. She’s offered herself up, and now it’s time for the longed-for reward. She counts silently to ten, then turns to the person sitting closest to her. The grey-haired woman with the plait.
‘Please.’
She nods to the woman and hears her take a deep breath. A different story, yet still very familiar.
Daughter, cancer, not yet thirty.
She puts on her sympathetic expression, makes notes on her pad. The pen moves quickly, turning the grief to ink. The grey-haired woman is crying. Tears roll quietly as her story unfolds, stopping for a moment at the rim of her glasses before carrying on down the woman’s cheeks. More words.
Not fair, her whole life ahead of her. Miss her so much.
When the grey-haired woman has finished she takes her glasses off and wipes them with one of the cheap paper napkins. Then she folds it neatly and puts it in her handbag, carefully, as if her tears are made of glass and she wants to take them home. Put them in a glass-fronted cabinet like tiny, translucent pearls of grief.
The thought makes Veronica lose her concentration, and the next person has already stared talking. Lars, the man with the beard. More words, a harsher voice. She hurriedly makes some notes. Sucking up his story with her pen.
Wife, car accident, drunk driver, brain damage, wrong treatment, never recovered.
No tears, just anger. Bitterness. She adds that to her pad. Her hand is moving more easily across the page now.
Hatred, fantasises about revenge, causing pain. Eye for an eye . . . They all need to be punished, all of them, the drunk driver, the doctors, everyone!
Lars falls silent and takes a deep breath. At first he looks relieved, then ashamed. He mumbles something Veronica doesn’t hear, then looks down at his hands. They’re rough, callused, the skin cracked so deeply that the dirt and oil won’t wash out. Dad’s hands, Uncle Harald’s. Her own hands are soft and smooth. Long fingers, better suited to a pen. Writing hands. Mum’s hands. She pushes the thoughts aside and nods to the next participant to start talking.
They go clockwise around the circle, leaving the speakers sniffing and sobbing, fumbling with the paper tissues. Her pen scratches the page, faster and faster, just like the pulse pumping reward hormones through her body.
Tragedy, our family will never get over it. Never.
The minute hand moves mechanically round the yellowed clock-face on the wall. Every fifth minute the hand sticks slightly and stops for a couple of seconds before pullin
g free with an audible click.
When all the stories have been told, the word that everyone always says is at the bottom of the last page, in capitals. The question that hovers over the room, and which none of them can ever answer, no matter how many times they tell their stories.
WHY?
Veronica underlines it, rewrites the letters, the question mark, until the pen goes through the paper. She doesn’t stop until the minute hand on the clock clicks one last time and the session is over.
The relief is immense, mixing with the endorphins that have already taken over her brain. Her left hand feels for her lower right arm again, scratching idly over the cotton and the long scar hidden beneath it.
Is it over already? she thinks. Then: When can I have more?
Chapter 2
Summer 1983
I
t was good rain, really. Not a storm that flattened crops, but soft, mild rain that gently moistened the ground and would stop at sunrise, so that the ears and leaves would be dry by lunchtime. Harvest rain, as the farmers around there called it. Good rain, and on any other summer night Chief of Police Krister Månsson and the men standing with him in the yard at Backagården would have welcomed it.
He pushed his cap back and ran his hand over his forehead. Even though he had loosened his tie a good while back, his blue uniform shirt was still sticking to his neck.
He had conducted searches before, he told himself. Or had at least practised them when he’d done his officer’s training a few years ago. It was all a matter of planning, organisation and leadership. Of methodically ticking off every imaginable alternative until you found what you were looking for. But in darkness and rain that was easier said than done.
Some of the men had left their cars running, parked in a circle around him in the yard in front of the Nilssons’ house. Their headlights illuminated the growing crowd of people, turning them into silhouettes, their legs and lower bodies clearly lit up, but their faces ghostly and difficult to make out. But he didn’t need to see them. They all recognised each other. They all knew each other.
Månsson looked around at the faces. He tugged slightly at the creased jacket of his uniform, a little too tight and on the point of succumbing to the rain. He adjusted his cap and raised his hand.
‘OK, listen up!’
Neither his words nor the hand gesture managed to still the buzz of voices around him. He wondered if he should climb onto the back of the pick-up beside him, but realised that the metal sides were too high and slippery to risk his dignity. So he tried raising his voice and sounding more authoritative instead.
‘Everyone, listen!’ The result was only marginally better.
‘Shut up, for fuck’s sake! Månsson’s got something to say. We’re wasting time while you stand around talking shit.’
The harsh voice belonged to a lanky man who had jumped up onto the pick-up behind Månsson without any problem. Harald Aronsson, the boy’s uncle. The chatter stopped at once and the men crowded closer around Månsson and the pick-up.
He cleared his throat and nodded appreciatively at Aronsson, but got no reaction.
‘Most of you have already heard what’s happened, and I can understand that you’re eager to get on with the search,’ he began. ‘But to make sure we’re all on the same page, I’m going to give you a brief summary of what we know at present.’
He paused to give the late arrivals the chance to come closer.
‘So, we’re looking for little Billy Nilsson, almost five years old. He was last seen by his mother just before eight o’clock, meaning that he’s been gone . . .’
Månsson looked at his watch, a square digital contraption Malin had given him to mark their twentieth wedding anniversary. The only one of the four protruding metal buttons he understood was the one that made the little screen light up, which was actually quite handy in the dark.
‘. . . almost five hours now. His family have already searched the garden, the house, the barn and outhouse . . . I mean, cowshed,’ he quickly corrected himself, ‘before they sounded the alarm at eleven o’clock. Just before midnight the police started searching the garden with a tracker dog.’
He gestured towards the house at the other end of the yard, and to his satisfaction most of them turned their heads.
‘The dog found a gap beneath the fence leading to a field of maize at the far end of the garden. Unfortunately it lost the trail there, probably because of the rain, or because Billy’s parents and brother and sister had already been there.’
He lowered his hand and waited until everyone was looking at him again.
‘So it looks like the boy crawled under the fence and got lost among the vegetation. As you all know, the maize is as tall as a man at this time of year, so it’s easy to get lost out in the field, especially in the dark. This is where we need your help. We’re going to form four search parties . . .’
*
When Månsson had finished the briefing he noted with relief that everyone in the yard followed his instructions. They quickly split into teams and left the farm either on foot or in their cars, each group led by one of his uniformed officers.
They were all keen to get going as soon as possible. Most had children of their own and could easily imagine the hell the Nilsson family must be going through. But it was also about the collective relief the whole district would feel when little Billy was reunited with his mother – wet, frozen and frightened, but alive. Because that was obviously what was going to happen. They were all counting on it, and some of them may even have been feeling a measure of excitement, Månsson thought. They were also looking forward to the possibility that they might be the one who found the boy. Whoever found Billy Nilsson would never have to pay for his own drinks, either in the local pub or at the park pavilion, Harald Aronsson would see to that.
Månsson had been chief of police in Reftinge for four years now. He moved down here with his family when he got fed up of the nightshifts, drunk drivers and crazies in Norrköping. He was tired of being overtaken in his career by younger, hungrier officers. In Reftinge, right on the edge of the Skåne Plain, he was free from all that. He was in charge of twelve police officers and two civilian employees – women who answered the phone, received reports and issued weapons licences.
He himself had grown up in a similar agricultural area on the Östgöta Plain, and knew how things worked in the countryside, which was presumably one of the reasons why he’d got the job. In his experience, people who lived in the country worked hard and helped each other out. They largely stuck to the Ten Commandments, which meant that Reftinge’s crime figures mostly consisted of burglaries, illegal hunting, drink-driving and traffic offences. As far as the last two were concerned, he knew his officers were more inclined to be lenient than strict. There was a sort of tacit agreement between the inhabitants and the forces of law and order that had been established long before his time. Out in the countryside people needed their cars. No car meant no job, and no job meant no food on the table. And he didn’t want to be the person who stripped a family of both employment and food. Being an outsider was hard enough as it was, not just for him but for Malin and the children. It took time to settle in and be accepted, not least when you had a different dialect.
He had certainly done his best. He had got used to being called Månn-senn rather than Måån-sson. He had switched from Gevalia coffee to Skåne Roast, and had learned to call lunch dinner. He, Malin and the children had all joined the local football club, and he went to the swimming baths at seven o’clock every Thursday to sit in the sauna with the old boys. His efforts had paid off. Last season Malin was appointed vice-treasurer of the club, and he became head coach of the under-fourteen boys team. And early last spring he had been invited to join one of the big hunting teams. He was looking forward to the autumn, he genuinely couldn’t wait.
Before then things were likely to liven up a bit, towards the end of the harvest when the men were worn out and fractious. Fights, dr
unkenness and criminal damage, an assault or two if things got really bad. But it didn’t usually get any worse than that. In fact before this evening there hadn’t been a single incident that had demanded much of him at all in his four years as chief of police, which suited him fine. He preferred to keep a low profile. Drink his morning coffee in peace and quiet while he read the local paper and magazines about country life and hunting. Go to meetings of the local chamber of commerce, the Red Cross and the local council. Burn a bit of hash at parents’ evenings so that all the parents knew what to look out for in case any enterprising youngster managed to bring a lump home from Denmark. Run annual bicycle and traffic awareness courses in local schools. That was the sort of police work he preferred. The sort he was good at.
The realisation that all eyes were now on him had hit home when the reserves they’d called in were gathered in the yard. An anxious lump had formed in his stomach, and only grew larger as the number of men rose. Everyone was looking to him, trusting he would help them put an end to the Nilsson family’s nightmare.
Månsson looked back at the main house, where every lamp seemed to be lit now. Two children, a girl and a boy, the same ages as his kids. He tried to remember the names of Billy’s siblings. He had known their father’s name, Ebbe, for some time. Ebbe Nilsson was a calm, thoughtful man who didn’t make a lot of fuss, one of the ones who used to sit quietly on the lower benches of the sauna while other men talked. His brother-in-law, Harald Aronsson, for instance.
And everyone knew the children’s mother, Magdalena Nilsson, née Aronsson, of course. The very first beauty queen in the district, whose black and white coronation photograph was still hanging in the lobby of the council building even though it was over twenty years ago now. That was probably as much to do with Magdalena’s surname as her beauty. The Aronsson family were a big noise in the district, which didn’t exactly make the current situation any easier.
End of Summer Page 2