ånsson managed to get all the way to dessert without either thinking or saying anything about Billy’s case. He devoured three helpings of cod while he listened attentively as Malin and Johan talked about their days at school. He even managed to come up with a few polite questions in between mouthfuls. The telephone, which he had finally dared to plug back in the other day, remained silent out in the hall.
All in all it was a perfect evening, even if he might have wished that Jakob had been a bit more talkative. He had tried, tentatively, to find out if his schoolmates’ teasing had stopped now that Tommy Rooth was behind bars, but he didn’t get a clear answer.
Jakob would soon be fourteen, so he was hardly at an age when you confided in your parents. Månsson still felt he was doing his best, providing crisps and drinks whenever Jakob and his friends played games down in the basement in the evenings. He made an effort to appreciate the monotonous, industrial music he listened to, and had stopped asking why he had to have a tuft of hair left uncut at the back of his neck. But usually Jakob just rolled his eyes and grunted when he tried to talk to him. Månsson had found out from Malin that this season would probably be Jakob’s last in the football team, which was a disappointment he was going to have trouble hiding, especially seeing as he was the team’s coach. He wondered what had happened to the little boy who slept with his toy pistol in bed with him and wanted to catch bad guys just like his dad. He wished he’d made more of an effort to enjoy that time.
This evening Månsson wasn’t going to let himself be deflated by his shortcomings as a parent. He was just happy to get the chance to spend some time with his family without interruption at last.
‘So, how’s it going?’ his wife asked when the boys had cleared their dishes away and were sitting in front of the television down in the games room.
‘Well. We’re waiting for the test results from the pump house and Rooth’s car. But that’s mostly a formality. We’ve got him.’
Månsson realised that he had borrowed the last two sentences from Bure or Borg. He liked the two city cops better now. A sort of reluctant respect had developed, and had only grown stronger when they refrained from trying to persuade the District Police Chief to have Rooth transferred to the city prison. He had been pretty sure they would do that, snatching the suspect from the Hicksville cops to grab the glory for themselves.
‘Rooth was probably planning to blackmail Aronsson. Force him to compensate him for the hunting licence and income he believed had been stolen from him. But something went wrong and Billy died. I imagine the body’s buried somewhere in the forest behind the pump house. We’re busy searching right now.’
‘And Rooth still hasn’t confessed?’ Malin spooned another pear in chocolate sauce onto his dish.
Månsson shook his head. ‘I don’t think he’s going to either.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because some crimes are so terrible that the perpetrator never confesses, even though he knows he did it. There are two reasons for that.’
He put his dessert spoon down and held up one finger, just as Bure had done the other day when he explained the same thing to him.
‘One: if you confess to something as terrible as killing a child, that makes you a terrible person. An evil person. Your friends and family have no choice but to cut you off and distance themselves from you. At a stroke you lose whatever support network you might have left.’
‘But they’ll still see the evidence. If you’re found guilty in court, that’s usually because you are actually guilty.’
‘Of course, but this is about emotions, not logic. People find it really hard to accept that someone they know well, maybe even someone they have kids with, might be capable of doing something terrible. That they’ve lived with someone like that without noticing anything.’ Månsson lowered his hand and drank a sip of coffee. ‘As long as there’s no confession, anyone who feels so inclined can regard it as a miscarriage of justice, that they’re not the ones who make a mistake. People see what they want to, basically.’
‘Mm.’ Malin refilled her own cup. ‘That argument is based on the idea that everyone thinks people are either good or utterly bad. That it isn’t possible to be a good friend, a good husband, and simultaneously a serious criminal. Which surely is perfectly possible,’ she added, half as a question, half as a statement. ‘A bank robber can be a good dad. A murderer can be a good friend.’
‘Of course.’ Månsson nodded.
‘But it can’t be a fear of losing his loved ones that’s stopping Rooth from confessing, can it?’ Malin raised one eyebrow slightly. ‘He hasn’t got any friends, and hardly any family to support him. Half the village were pointing the finger at him long before you arrested him.’
‘True,’ Månsson said. ‘Rooth belongs to the second category.’
‘Meaning what?’ Malin said, before he had time to raise a second finger.
‘That the crime he’s suspected of is so terrible that he can’t cope with admitting it, even to himself. That’s far more common among people like Rooth who have an inflated sense of their own importance.’
Malin put her cup down.
‘So you’re saying that Rooth, no matter how much evidence you present him with, will never say what he did to Billy Nilsson because that would mean admitting to himself that he’s a monstrous child killer?’
Månsson nodded slowly, and was about to say something when Jakob came into the kitchen. He was holding an empty bowl in his hand, and waved it about vaguely.
‘Are there any more crisps?’
‘In the larder,’ Malin said. ‘You’re taking more for Johan as well, aren’t you?’
Jakob muttered something in response. Månsson looked at his eldest son’s back and suddenly remembered that he had meant to ask him something.
‘Jakob?’
‘Mm.’
‘Do you know the Nilsson kids? Mattias and Vera?’
Jakob went on rummaging through the larder for a few moments before he turned round.
‘What do you mean, know?’
Månsson tried not to let himself get wound up by the aggressive tone. Jakob glowered at him, then gave in.
‘I know who they are, but we’re not friends, if that’s what you’re wondering.’
‘What are they like?’
Jakob shrugged his shoulders. ‘Mattias is keen on sport.’
‘And Vera?’
Another shrug, possibly even more reluctant than the last one.
‘What about her?’
‘What’s she like?’
Jakob pulled an ambiguous grimace. ‘She’s hard to miss. Look, Hill Street Blues is about to start, so . . .’
He squirmed a little and took a couple of steps towards the door.
‘Does she have many friends?’
Jakob stopped in the doorway. ‘Not among the girls,’ he said with a slight smile. ‘But the boys like her.’
Darling,
At the end of the summer we’re going to get away from here. You promised me that a long time ago. Do you remember? Promised it was going to be just you and me. Forever.
I know there are sometimes others. I can smell them on your skin. It doesn’t matter. At least I try to convince myself that it doesn’t, but it’s getting harder and harder. You don’t come to our meeting place as often anymore, and you don’t take me out in your car like you used to. Have you got tired of me? I don’t want to believe that. You’re not like that. Are you? Is all of this a big mistake?
Chapter 29
‘V
era. Vee-raa!’
Mum’s voice wakes her. Makes her sit up in the middle of taking a breath. She looks around for a few confused seconds. Her heart is thudding with joy, with loss. Then her brain catches up. She’s in the room she used to share with Mattias. But she’s no longer a child. And this winter Mum will have been dead twenty years.
She and Dad sat for a long time down in the kitchen earlier. She tried to summon up the courage to pull out the photofit picture
and tell him what she’d concluded about the blond man. But all of a sudden her courage and resolve had vanished, and they mostly talked an awful lot about nothing. About how hot the summer was, about the harvest, about how long her drive had taken. They were like two skaters circling round each other. Taking tentative little steps so as not to break the thin ice separating them from the cold, dark depths.
When her dad suggested she might like to go upstairs and have a rest before they went to get food for the evening meal she jumped at the idea. Told herself it would be better to talk this evening, when they’ve both had a bit more time to get used to each other.
She’s got no idea how long she’s been asleep. The old clock radio is showing four zeroes. She wonders about trying to put it right, then realises she’s forgotten how it works. Everything in the room looks the way it always has, just smaller and sadder, much like the village itself. Mattias’s dusty model aeroplanes are still on their shelf, and above them the wallpaper is slightly creased up by the picture rail. The poster from OK that she pinned up above the desk sometime in the mid-eighties and never bothered to take down looks bleached, and one corner is hanging loose.
She and Mattias shared this bunk bed after Billy was born. They carried on during the years following his disappearance, even though her own room was no longer being used. No one suggested otherwise, not Dad, not Mattias, not her. Later, when Mattias started at the Police Academy, the room and the bunk bed became hers alone, apart from the weekends when he came back to visit. But to be honest he mostly slept at Cecilia’s then, which is another reason why she hates the stupid cow.
She’s already tried the doors to both Billy’s and Mum’s bedrooms. They’re locked, as usual. Dad moved down to the leather sofa in the study the night Billy went missing, so that Mum wouldn’t be disturbed. Two decades later he’s still sleeping downstairs, and those doors have remained locked. She hasn’t been inside either of the rooms since then. Before the blond man appeared she hadn’t given the rooms any thought at all. Not even on the few occasions when she came home. She wonders what they look like. If her memory is accurate, and if the blond man would recognise them if he saw them.
She swings her legs off the edge of the bed and pulls the photofit picture from one of the side pockets of her bag. Maybe it’s just common sense catching up with her, but she sees more differences between the picture and the blond man than she did before. Unless she’s merely looking for a good excuse not to have to say anything. Her uncertainty is exacerbated by the silence of the house, echoing through the landing between the locked doors.
The sound of a car engine interrupts her thoughts. Dad’s back from the shop. She hears him open the front door, then the sound of him putting things away in the kitchen.
‘Food’ll be ready in half an hour,’ he calls.
*
Mattias shows up in time for the meal. In a car this time, and thankfully without wife and children. His presence makes everything more difficult, and she decides to postpone her conversation with Dad until the following day.
It doesn’t take long for her to realise that Mattias and Dad have dinner together fairly often, just the two of them. She gets the impression that Mattias even spends the night here, which would explain the rolled-up military sleeping bag on the top bunk in their old room.
They eat at the large oak table in the kitchen, with space for six people around it. Even so, they sit unnecessarily cramped together at one end, as if they were clinging to each other and wanted to avoid the emptiness around the rest of the table at all costs. A spiral flycatcher hangs above the lamp. It looks new, probably the only thing in there that’s been swapped or changed. The flecked wooden floor, the rag rug, the yellowing wallpaper, the kitchen cupboards that could have done with being repainted years ago – everything is the same. The fly that was trying to get out through the window earlier is stuck to the brown glue of the flycatcher. She thinks it’s the same fly, anyway. The green and black insect has stopped moving.
*
Halfway through coffee she changes her mind. The cognac her dad has served may be responsible for her newfound courage.
‘I’ve been dreaming about Mum,’ she begins, feeling the nervousness in her throat.
‘Oh.’ Dad’s voice has a wary tone to it, as usual.
‘I often talk about her with one of my groups. Grief therapy. There’s a man there, he’s about twenty-five years old. Blond hair, blue eyes.’
‘Vera . . .’ Mattias is glaring sullenly at her but she looks away.
‘This man says his name is Isak. He talks about himself, about memories from when he was a child. About a five-year-old boy who went missing, and a garden with a treehouse and a hollow elm . . .’
Dad looks up. His eyes are more alert now, and he’s even more wary.
‘It all seems to fit. And then I saw this.’ She reaches for her back pocket, and feels her cheeks flush.
‘OK, Vera . . .’
Mattias is properly angry now, but her blood is up and she refuses to let herself be deterred.
‘Look!’ She puts the photofit picture down on the table triumphantly. She waits until they’ve both had a chance to read the caption and understand what the picture is.
‘This man, Isak, this is what he looks like. Almost exactly. He looks like Billy would have looked.’
Silence. Dad takes his reading glasses from his breast pocket and pulls the picture towards him. She continues to avoid looking at Mattias. Her heart is hammering against her ribs. She stares at her dad’s face, waiting for the reaction that must surely come. Tries to imagine it. Joy, tears, sadness, maybe even anger. But nothing happens.
After what feels like an eternity, but which couldn’t really have been more than a few seconds, her dad pushes the photofit picture away.
‘That isn’t your little brother,’ he says in such an unexpectedly harsh voice that both she and Mattias are taken aback. ‘Billy’s never coming back, Vera. I reconciled myself to that a long time ago. I thought you had, too.’
*
She walks out to the car with Mattias. Dad has long since said goodnight and shut himself away in the study. The light of the television flickers through the crack under the door. Her movements are heavy with disappointment. Even if she has tried to tell herself that this has all been for Dad’s sake, it was just as much for hers, if not more. She wanted to be the good daughter who found Billy, who solved the mystery once and for all. Ridiculous, she can see that now. It takes more than a few vague memories and a computer-generated image to have any effect on Dad’s grief. And bearing in mind everything she knows about grief, she ought to have had the sense to realise that she shouldn’t talk to him until she had firm evidence. Instead she had jumped the gun and made him angry.
It’s almost completely dark outside now. A nightingale is singing from the avenue of chestnuts. The sound is melancholic, echoing faintly off the neglected buildings. Mattias leans on the bonnet of his jeep, pulls a crumpled packet of cigarettes from his pocket, offers her one, then lights it between cupped hands.
‘I didn’t know you smoked.’
‘I don’t.’ He grins and blows the smoke from corner of his mouth. ‘Promise not to tell Cecilia.’
‘About you smoking?’
Mattias gives her a long look but doesn’t rise to the challenge.
‘When did you find that photofit picture?’ he says instead.
‘A week or so ago.’ She tries to sound indifferent.
‘When were you thinking of telling me?’
‘I just did.’
She shrugs her shoulders but doesn’t look away this time. They try to outstare each other for a few moments until she changes tack.
‘Do you ever think about him? Billy? Who he might have become?’
Mattias looks away, which in itself is an admission.
‘You need to be careful, Vera,’ he mumbles.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that you can’t just show
up like this and stir things up.’
‘What do you mean, show up?’ she snaps. ‘You were the one who suggested I come down.’
‘To commemorate Mum’s birthday, yes. Not to blurt out to Dad that you think Billy’s still alive.’
She looks away and takes an angry drag on the cigarette.
‘I know you mean well,’ he goes on. ‘You just need to think a bit more. Not jump to conclusions before we’ve had time to look into it properly. Sometimes we want something to be true so badly that it makes us blind to the actual truth.’
She glares at him, wondering whether to go on being angry. But his voice doesn’t sound as bossy now, and besides, he said we. We, as in him and her.
They each sucked on their cigarettes. She can’t really get over the fact that he’s a secret smoker. Mattias is the most honest person she knows. Or at least he used to be. She thinks about the box in her closet. Suddenly gets it into her head that it could have been Mattias who opened it. It’s not as unimaginable as she’d like to believe. She heard him look in there, after all. But why would Mattias poke about among her things?
‘I saw the sleeping bag in our room,’ she says, without really knowing why. Maybe she wants to punish him, but regrets it at once. ‘How bad is it?’ she goes on in a gentler voice.
He doesn’t answer, just picks a flake of tobacco from his tongue. She feels ashamed. She’s crossed the line, sticking her nose into something that’s none of her business.
‘Cecilia and I are having couple’s counselling.’
‘Right,’ she says, which is a stupid thing to say. But oddly enough, in spite of the fact that Mattias is having problems, she mostly feels pleased that he’s confiding in her. Before she thinks of anything better to say he stands up, drops the cigarette butt on the ground and steps on it.
‘Go and get some sleep. Dad’s asked Uncle Harald, Tess and Tim to come over tomorrow to mark Mum’s birthday. I’ll be back with Cecilia and the girls. Stay calm and please – don’t mention Billy again. Once this weekend’s over I promise I’ll find out who that Isak really is. OK?’
End of Summer Page 14